On the 24th, the blockade of Malta was entrusted to Nelson by Keith, the Commander-in-chief sailing for Genoa to assist the Austrians in the siege of that place, which eventually fell in the first week of the following June. The position was an ignominious one from Nelson’s point of view, as his letters testify. He told his superior that “Without some rest, I am gone,” and that he was “absolutely exhausted.” In referring to Keith in a note to Lord Minto he underlines “my Commander-in-chief,” for a reason which is fairly obvious. “Ought I to trust Dame Fortune any more?” he asks, “her daughter may wish to step in and tear the mother from me. I have in truth serious thoughts of giving up active service—Greenwich Hospital seems a fit retreat for me after being evidently thought unfit to command in the Mediterranean.” “We of the Nile are not equal to Lord Keith in his (Acton’s) estimation, and ought to think it an honour to serve under such a clever man,” he tells Troubridge. “I can say little good of myself: I am far from well”; “My state of health is very precarious. Two days ago I dropped with a pain in my heart, and I am always in a fever”; “my very ill state of health”; “I believe I am almost finished,” are passages to be found in his correspondence at this period. He informed Keith that his health was “so very indifferent,” that he was obliged “in justice to myself, to retire to Palermo for a few weeks, and to direct Troubridge to carry on the service during my necessary absence. I shall quit this station when matters are all put in a right way.”
Troubridge heard of Nelson’s decision with unfeigned sorrow. “I beseech you,” he says in a note of such sincere regard and affection that it is worthy of place in any “Life of Nelson,” “hear the entreaties of a sincere friend, and do not go to Sicily for the present.”
Nelson paid no heed to the warning, and proceeded to Palermo. While returning to Malta the Foudroyant was able to render assistance to the Penelope (36) frigate, which was following the Guillaume Tell (86) in much the same way as a sturdy little terrier sometimes follows a much larger dog. After some hours the Lion (64) came up, followed by the Foudroyant. The Guillaume Tell—the sole remaining sail-of-the-line which had escaped at the Nile—was endeavouring to break the blockade of Valetta, but the time had come for her last fight with the undaunted foe. She surrendered after a splendid resistance on Sunday morning, the 30th March, and was towed in a very crippled and dismasted state to Syracuse. In due course she was refitted and rendered good service in the British navy as the Malta. Rear-Admiral Decrès was wounded and taken prisoner, and some 200 of the 1220 men on his flagship were either killed or rendered hors de combat.
Sir Edward Berry, who commanded the Foudroyant, wrote a hasty letter giving Nelson a few particulars. “I had but one wish this morning—it was for you,” is the opening sentence, “How we prayed for you, God knows, and your sincere and faithful friend,” are the concluding words. Could better evidence be produced of the love which animated Nelson and his “band of brothers”? “My task is done, my health is lost, and the orders of the great Earl of St Vincent are completely fulfilled—thanks, ten thousand thanks, to my brave friends!” Thus he wrote to Berry on the 5th April 1800, and on the following day he made similar remarks to Lord Minto: “Our dear great Earl of St Vincent’s orders to me were to follow the French Mediterranean fleet, and to annihilate them: it has been done, thanks to the zeal and bravery of my gallant friends! My task is done, my health lost, and I have wrote to Lord Keith for my retreat. May all orders be as punctually obeyed, but never again an Officer at the close, of what I must, without being thought vain, (for such I am represented by my enemies,) call a glorious career, be so treated! I go with our dear friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton; but whether by water or land depends on the will of Lord Keith.” Again and again Nelson refers to the prowess of his comrades in arms. “The happy capture of the William Tell,” he writes to the Capitan Pacha, “is the finish to the whole French fleet, which my Royal Master desired me to destroy. Having, by the bravery of the Officers and Men under my command, accomplished my task, I am going to England for the benefit of my health; but I can assure you, and beg of your Excellency to assure the Grand Signior of the same, that should the Enemy again send a Naval force to attack his Dominions, I shall hold myself ready to come forth again for their destruction.” To the Caimakan Pacha he says, “It was my orders, in May 1798, to destroy the French Mediterranean fleet. By the happy capture of the Généreux and William Tell, (the last on the 30th March,) thanks to the Almighty, and the bravery of the Officers and Men under my command, all, all, are taken, burnt, or sunk. Of the thirteen Sail of the Line, not one remains; and I trust that very soon the same may be told of their Army, who dared to land on the Territory of the Sublime Porte. Perish all the enemies of his Imperial Majesty the Grand Signior! Having completely obeyed my orders, with great injury to my health, I am going to England for the benefit of it.” He adds that he will not fail his ally, should another French fleet menace the Turkish dominions. “I shall hold myself ready, if I am thought fit for such a service, to come forth, and be the instrument of God’s vengeance on such miscreant infernal scoundrels.” He writes to Earl Spencer, enclosing Berry’s account of the capture of the French battleship, and assures himself that his Lordship “will not be sparing of promotion to the deserving. My friends wished me to be present. I have no such wish; for a something might have been given me, which now cannot. Not for all the world would I rob any man of a sprig of laurel—much less my children of the Foudroyant! I love her as a fond father, a darling child, and glory in her deeds. I am vain enough to feel the effects of my school. Lord Keith sending me nothing, I have not, of course, a free communication. I have wrote to him for permission to return to England, when you will see a broken-hearted man.... My complaint, which is principally a swelling of the heart, is at times alarming to my friends....” “My mind is fixed for retreat at this moment,” he informs “fighting Berry.” “Assure all the Foudroyants of my sincere regard and affection for them. They may depend upon me.” “I glory in them, my darling children, served in my school, and all of us caught our professional zeal and fire from the great and good Earl of St Vincent”—thus he writes to Keith. None of his hundreds of letters more fully reveals the charming nature of the man, than those quoted above. While Nelson was fond enough of glory for himself, he was too large-hearted to deprive others of it.
We have now to return to his unhappy and miscalculated transactions with the people whom he served not wisely but too well, to show him again “a vehement partisan of the Court of Naples,” as Judge O’Connor Morris expresses it. “I purpose going in the Foudroyant,” he tells Keith, on the 12th May, “in a few days, to Palermo, as I am under an old promise to her Sicilian Majesty, that whenever she returned to the Continent, I would escort her over. Her Majesty has now made application to me for that purpose; and, as it may be necessary to take another Ship for the escort, I purpose taking the Alexander with me.” It is clear that Nelson had no right to enter into any such arrangement, especially as there were too few rather than too many ships for the blockade of Malta. Before Keith’s despatch was received forbidding Nelson to use the vessels, the Admiral had left Malta for Palermo, which he reached on the 31st May. But he did get a despatch ordering him to take the ships then at Leghorn to Spezia, which Nelson only partly obeyed, and stationed himself at the former port to await the convenience of the Queen and family. There he was met on the 24th June by his Commander-in-chief, whose feelings may be gauged by his letter to the Hon. A. Paget, Sir William Hamilton’s successor as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of the Two Sicilies. It was written at Leghorn on the 16th July, two days after the disastrous defeat of the Austrians by Napoleon at Marengo.
He says: “I was so displeased by the withdrawing of the Ships from before Malta, and with other proceedings that Her Majesty did not take any notice of me latterally which had no effect on my attention to Her Rank, what a Clamour to letting in the Ships to Malta will occasion I assure you nothing has given me more real concern it was so near exhausted.”[46] “The Paget Papers” make it quite clear that Queen Caroline did not go out of her way to impress Keith, but rather exhibited a fondness for snubbing him. He writes to Paget on another occasion to the effect that “the Queen expected the Whole Squadron to attend on Her Court which was impossible a Riot happened in the Square the Queen desired I would go to the people, I declined having no Authority to do so and disapproving of all tumults on every pretence in short Her Majesty took leave of Every one in Public but me....” An extremely important letter[47] will also be found in the same collection of documents which sheds much light on the personalities of the Royal folk with whom Nelson had so much to do in this phase of his career. Paget is writing to Lord Grenville, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:
“The King, whose real character has from circumstances shown itself during and since the revolution more than at any former period, is timid and bigoted and, as is often the case in the same disposition, cruel and revengeful. He has no natural turn for, nor do his habits allow him to attend to business. He has no guide for his Conduct but that of private consideration, and to take the present Instance, whatever plea he may set forth for delaying his return to Naples, I am in my own mind convinced, and I should not utter these opinions but upon the surest grounds, that His Sicilian Majesty labours under the strongest apprehensions for his own personal safety.
“The Queen’s character generally is too well known to Your Lordship to require any comment upon it from me. I have every reason to suppose that not from principles but from pique, Her Sicilian Majesty has been very violent in opposing the King’s return since my arrival. She had been taught to believe that I was sent here to Dictate and to use haughty language upon the Subject, at which idea I know from undoubted authority she was most violently irritated.... But I have reason to think that She has entirely lost her Influence, though she meddles as much as ever in business. She assists at every Council that is held....
“The King and Queen of Naples are, as I have already mentioned, upon the worst terms.... His Sicilian Majesty considers the former intrigues of the Queen as the principal cause of the misfortunes that have befallen Him. He has made a solemn vow not to return with Her to Naples, on which account he is anxious that she should take this Journey to Vienna.” He adds that he has been led to suppose that Queen Caroline’s visit to Vienna “is to endeavour to produce a change in the disposition of that Court which is thought to be extremely unfriendly,” and that her Majesty’s uneasiness was due to a suspicion that the Emperor might be led to take advantage of the defenceless state of the Sicilian dominions. In a “Private and Confidential” note to Grenville of the same date dealing with the intrigues of Lady Hamilton who, according to Paget, had represented him as a Jacobin and coxcomb, he mentions Nelson’s health as “I fear sadly impaired, & I am assured that his fortune is fallen into the same state in consequence of great losses which both His Lordship & Lady Hamilton have sustained at Faro & other Games of Hazard. They are expected back from Malta every day, & are then I understand to proceed by Sea to England.”
The Earl of Dundonald affords us an intimate glimpse of Nelson at this time in his “Autobiography.” He was then serving under Keith, and had several conversations with the great sailor during the visit of the Commander-in-chief to Palermo. “From one of his frequent injunctions, ‘Never mind manœuvres, always go at them,’ I subsequently had reason,” he says, “to consider myself indebted for successful attacks under apparently difficult circumstances.