The defeat of the Spanish, as Jervis had foreseen, was timely. Mantua had just capitulated; British efforts to secure an honorable peace had failed; consols were at 51, and specie payments stopped by the Bank of England; Austria was on the verge of separate negotiations, the preliminaries of which were signed at Loeben on April 18; France, in the words of Bonaparte, could now "turn all her forces against England and oblige her to a prompt peace."[1] The news of St. Vincent was thus a ray of light on a very dark horizon. Its strategic value, along with the Battle of Camperdown, has already been made clear.
[Footnote 1: Correspondence, III, 346.]
The British fleet, after refitting at Lisbon, took up a blockade of the Spanish at Cadiz which continued through the next two years. Discontent and mutiny, which threatened with each fresh ship from home, was guarded against by strict discipline, careful attention to health and diet, and by minor enterprises which served as diversions, such as the bombardment of Cadiz and the unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands, July 24-25, 1797, in which Nelson lost his right arm.
| THE NILE CAMPAIGN, MAY-AUGUST 1798 |
The Battle of the Nile
Nelson's return to the Cadiz blockade in May, 1798, after months of suffering in England, was coincident with the gathering of a fresh storm cloud in the Mediterranean, though the direction in which it threatened was still completely concealed. While Sicily, Greece, Portugal and even Ireland were mentioned by the British Admiralty as possible French objectives, Egypt was apparently not thought of. Yet its strategic position between three continents remained as important as in centuries past, controlling the trade of the Levant and threatening India by land or sea. "The time is not far distant," Bonaparte had already written, "when we shall feel that truly to destroy England we must take possession of Egypt." In point of fact the strength of England rested not merely on the wealth of the Indies, but on her merchant fleets, naval control, home products and manufactures, in short her whole industrial and commercial development, too strong to be struck down by a blow in this remote field. Still, if the continued absence of a British fleet from the Mediterranean could be counted on, the Egyptian campaign was the most effective move against her that offered at the time. It was well that the British Admiralty rose to the danger. Jervis, though he pointed out the risks involved, was directed to send Nelson with an advance squadron of 3 ships, later strengthened to 14, to watch the concentration of land and naval forces at Toulon. "The appearance of a British fleet in the Mediterranean," wrote the First Lord, Spencer, in urging the move, "is a condition on which the fate of Europe may be stated to depend."
Before a strong northwest wind the French armada on May 19 left Toulon—13 of the line, 13 smaller vessels, and a fleet of transports which when joined by contingents from Genoa, Corsica, and Civita Vecchia brought the total to 400 sail, crowded with over 30,000 troops. Of the fighting fleet there is the usual tale of ships carelessly fitted out, one-third short-handed, and supplied with but two months' food—a tale which simply points the truth that the winning of naval campaigns begins months or years before.
The gale from which the French found shelter under Sardinia and Corsica fell later with full force on Nelson to the westward of the islands. His flagship the Vanguard lost her foremast and remaining topmasts, while at the same time his four frigates, so essential in the search that followed, were scattered and failed to rejoin. Having by extraordinary exertions refitted in Sardinia in the short space of four days, he was soon again off Toulon, but did not learn of the enemy's departure until May 31, and even then he got no clue as to where they had gone. Here he was joined on June 7 by the promised reënforcements, bringing his squadron to 13 74's and the Leander of 50 guns.
The ensuing search continued for two months, until August 1, the date of the Battle of the Nile. During this period, Nelson appears to best advantage; in the words of David Hannay, he was an "embodied flame of resolution, with none of the vulgar bluster that was to appear later."
Moving slowly southward, the French flotilla had spent ten days in the occupation of Malta—the surrender of which was chiefly due to French influence among the Knights of St. John who held the island—and departed on June 19 for their destination, following a circuitous route along the south side of Crete and thence to the African coast 70 miles west of Alexandria.