Downing St Tuesday 3 P.M.[733]
My dear Sir,
I have just seen Lord Hawkesbury and Lord Barham, Adml Cornwallis having anticipated your intentions by detaching 20 sail of the line off Ferrol, and the wind being now favourable, it appears to us that no time should be lost in ordering Sir D. Baird to sail. As Ld H. and Ld B. seem to entertain no doubt of your approving of this step, I shall send the orders without delay. I shall remain in town tonight and be at your disposal as best suits your engagements.
Ever yours,
Castlereagh.
The most interesting words in this letter are "your intentions." They seem to imply that the plan of detaching part of Admiral Cornwallis's fleet off Brest to the assistance of Calder off the North West of Spain was originally Pitt's own, not Lord Barham's, as has been hitherto supposed. They must not be pressed too much; for the advice of Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty, must have been paramount. Nevertheless the proposal was evidently Pitt's as well as Barham's. The fact that Cornwallis anticipated it bespeaks the resolve alike of Ministers and the admiral at all costs to stop Villeneuve off Finisterre and prevent the naval concentration in French waters on which Napoleon laid so much stress. The success of the British counter-stroke is well known. Villeneuve, having been roughly handled by Calder, put into Ferrol, and finally, a prey to discouragement, made off for Cadiz, thus upsetting Napoleon's scheme for the invasion of England. In due course Nelson returned to England for a brief time of rest at "dear, dear Merton," and then set off on his last cruise. Before his departure he had an interview with Pitt at Downing Street—the only occasion, I believe, on which they met—and found in the ante-room Sir Arthur Wellesley, just returned from India. At the end of the interview Pitt flattered the great seaman by an act of attention which he thus described: "Mr. Pitt paid me a compliment, which, I believe, he would not have paid to a Prince of the Blood. When I rose to go, he left the room with me and attended me to the carriage." By attentions such as these Chatham was wont to stimulate the patriotism of our warriors; and on this occasion his son played an equally inspiriting part. Imagination strives to picture the scene, especially when England's greatest statesman and greatest seaman passed through the ante-room where stood the future victor of Waterloo.[734]
Never again were those three heroes to meet. Nelson departed for Trafalgar. Pitt resumed the work which was wearing him to death, nerved, however, by the consciousness that the despatch of Nelson to the Mediterranean would foil Napoleon's project of making that sea a French lake, "the principal aim of my policy" as he declared it to be. In that quarter, then, Pitt won a decisive victory which was destined to save not only that sea, but the Continent from the domination of France. Whether a glimpse of the future course of events opened out to the wearied gaze of the statesman we know not. All we know is that in mid-December, when the "Victory" lay jury-masted and wind-bound for three days off Walmer Castle, the Lord Warden was at Bath, in hope of gaining health and strength for a struggle which concerned him even more nearly than that in the Mediterranean, namely, the liberation of North Germany and the Dutch Netherlands from the Napoleonic yoke.