The Years of Endurance (50 page)

he was essentially a moral man. Born in a Norfolk parsonage, he was a child of the Church of England. From the influence of its homely piety, he had passed at the age of twelve to the rough
life of the Navy. Its leading pr
inciple—that of unquestioning duty— had been transformed in the crucible of his imagination into a source of passionate inspiration.

Without influence he had risen by sheer merit to the rank of post-captain before he was twenty-one. He impressed every one with whom he came into contact professionally with the sense that he was no common being. But his greatest success was with those under his command. He was a man who led by love and example. There was nothing he would not do for those who served under him. There was nothing they would not dare for Nelson.

The exigencies of peace after the American war and what seemed to his superiors in that mediocre time the inconvenient excess of his zeal for the Service had deprived him in 1787 of employment. For five years he led the life of a poor half-pay officer, eating out his heart ashore, farming his father's glebe and fretting under the tedium of a respectable but ill-assorted marriage. They were years in which his career seemed finished and in which he and his friend Collingwood in like retirement told each other that they despaired of chance ever drawing them back to the seashore.

The outbreak of war found Nelson bombarding the Admiralty with requests for a ship, though it were only a cockle boat. They gave him a sixty-four, and since then—save for a winter's sick leave after the loss of his arm—he had been on continuous service in the Mediterranean, cheerfully fulfilling every mission entrusted to him, and by his anxiety to excel in the execution of duty winning a reputation for almost foolhardy gallantry. For four years he had toiled and waited for his hour until the discernment
of Jervis and the chance of battl
e at St. Vincent brought him on to a wider stage. Then in his first independent command as a flag officer he had tasted defeat—albeit glorious defeat—at Tenerife. He had returned to England physically shattered,
with
the hope of ever serving again almost vanished.

Now, nearing his fortieth year, he was again in command, with his reputation a little uncertain as of a man too reckless for his age. His countrymen, slow to recognise intellect, know his courage and ardour but had little conception of the quality of his mind. They had yet to realise its infinite capacity for taking pains, its knife-like penetration, its brilliant clarity. Its very lucidity, reducing every scheme and command to elemental terms such as a child could understand, tended to deceive them. They thought of him as a simple sailo
rman. They never conceived of h
im, till his miraculous deeds enlightened them, as the supreme embodiment of the genius of their country.

After many years of apprenticeship, he was now to be pitted against the most dazzling genius of his age—himself the embodiment of that great and terrifying explosion of human energy which patient England was struggling to hold in bounds. Nelson's, success or failure was to depend on his ability to guess and anticipate the thought of his adversary. To that test he brought qualities) of an almost unique order: immense professional knowledge and experience, the fruits of life-long application and discipline, selfless devotion to duty, inspired courage, a great heart and the imagination which can mobilise the evidence of the present and past to predict the future. His was that strange combination of brooding patience, study and intense concentration with a mercurial temperament that rose like lightning out of storm and in the hour chosen of destiny lighted the path to victory. Above all his power was based, like his country's, on adherence to moral law: once he was convinced that a course was right, nothing could shake his constancy to it and the burning tenacity of his purpose. The strength of his will was equal to Napoleon's. And because it derived more consistently from enduring principles it prevailed. Nelson's career of fame rose from victory to ever greater victory. Napoleon's rose and then fell.

On the 8th of May, 1798, Nelson left Gibraltar with three ships of the line and five frigates, sailing at dusk to conceal his eastward course from watching eyes. Nine days later, cruising in the Gulf of Lyons, one of his frigates captured a French corvette from Toulon whose crew under examination disclosed that the famous General Bonaparte had arrived in the port from Paris,
that
thousands of troops were embarking and that fifteen battleships of the line were waiting to sail.

Had it not been for the usual confusion and corruption of the Revolutionary ports they would have sailed already. Nearly 40,000

picked troops, m
ore than three hundred transports and fifty war
ships had been assembled. This huge armada was laden not only with horse, foot, artillery and stores of war but with engineers, architects and professors of every science and art, " from astronomers down to washerwomen."
¹
It was equipped for colonisation as well as for conquest. It was commanded by a brilliant galaxy of talent, for under Bonaparte's triumphant banner sailed Kleber, Desaix, Davout, Lannes, Murat, Bessieres, Marmont and Junot, while Brueys, with Ganteaume, Decres and Villeneuve, directed the fleet.

On the 19th, the day of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's arrest, the main division of the expedition with Bonaparte aboard weighed from Toulon, coasting north-eastwards along the Riviera shore in the direction of Genoa to gather its consorts. Nelson did not see it sail for he was still some way from the port. On the following night his flagship, the
Vanguard,
suffered disaster, her newly commissioned crew losing main and mizen topmasts and foremast in a sudden gale. For two days she was battered by the waves off the Sardinian coast and was only saved from total wreck by the cool daring of Captain Ball of the
Alexander,
who took her in tow and persisted in spite of intense danger to his own ship in bringing her under the lee of San Pietro Island.

Here on May 24th, while British sailors and Irish patriots were fighting in the village streets of Meath and Kildare, Nelson wrote to his wife to tell her of his setback. " I firmly believe that it was the Almighty's goodness to check my consummate vanity." In four days of herculean labour, the
Vanguard
was rigged with jury-masts and made fit for sea. Then with his three battleships Nelson sailed for the secret rendezvous where his frigates, scattered by the storm, were to have awaited him. But when he reached it on June 4th the frigates were not there. Next day, still waiting, he received momentous tidings. For Hardy in the dispatch brig
Mutine
arriving from Cadiz brought news not only of the errant frigates which, despairing of the
Vanguard's
plight, had gone to Gibraltar, but of Nelson's appointment to the command of a fleet. The opportunity for which he had waited so long had arrived.

It had come at a strange moment. Bonaparte had sailed a fortnight before and had gone no one knew where. A few days after

¹
Collingwood,
69.

Nelson had left Cadiz, St. Vincent had received Spencer's instructions about sending a fleet into the Mediterranean. Though the Spaniards, under orders from Paris, made as if about to put out of Cadiz, and though a concerted movement of United Irishmen threatened a new outbreak of mutiny in the Fleet, the old Admiral never hesitated. On May 19th he dispatched Hardy with Nelson's commission. On the 21st, without even waiting for the arrival of the promised reinforcements from England, he sent his ten finest battleships and captains—the elite of the Fleet—under Troubridge to join Nelson.

On June 6th Troubridge found his new commander. It was characteristic of Nelson that he refused to transfer his flag from the storm-battered
Vanguard.
His other two battleships were beyond the horizon searching for the newcomers. He did not wait for them but left the fifty-gun
Leander
to bid them follow. His orders were couched in the broadest terms. He was to pursue the Toulon fleet and attack it wherever found. Since Britain had no base in the Mediterranean and necessity dictated, he was not to stand on ceremony with neutrals. Should they out of terror of the French refuse to grant him supplies, he was to compel them at the cannon's mouth.

His instructions gave him little clue as to Bonaparte's destination. They mentioned Naples, Sicily, Portugal and Ireland, but made no reference to Egypt. He had no reliable information as to
the strength of the French battl
e fleet though he believed it to consist of fifteen or sixteen ships of the line. He knew even less of its whereabouts. Having no frigates he could not comb the seas for intelligence. He had only the light of his intellect to follow and the strength of his will. " Be they bound to the Antipodes," he assured Spencer, " your Lordship may rely that I will not lose a moment in bringing them to action."
¹

Following the course of the French he skirted the Genoese Riviera and Italian coast. The seas were strangely empty, for the French control of the Mediterranean had banished most of its former commerce. Day after day no sail appeared on the blue horizon. Once a convoy of distant Spanish merchantmen was sighted—plunder that might have made his captains rich with prize money and bought him some fine estate in England with white Jane Austen house and trim lawns and deer park. But his mind was

¹
Mahan,
Nelson,
I,
327.

set on his purpose and he let them pass unmolested. He dared not lose an hour.

On June 14th, while far away the fate of Ireland trembled in the balance and the rebel leaders in the green-bannered camp on Vinegar Hill waited for the tidings of French sails, Nelson obtained second
-
hand news from a passing ship that ten days earlier a great fleet had been seen to the west of Sicily. He accordingly sent the
Mutine
ahead to Naples with a letter begging Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador, to urge the King and his English-born Prime Minister, Acton, to shake off their subservience to the dreaded Jacobins and strike while the iron was hot. On the 17th he arrived off the port to learn what he had already suspected: that the French had gone to Malta and were either about to attack or had already attacked that island stronghold.

In a fever of excitement he wrote again to Hamilton. The Neapolitan King, who hated the French, whose sister-in-law had died on the s
caffold in Paris, who had secretl
y implored British aid, had a unique opportunity to strike a blow which should save his throne, liberate Italy and shatter the dark clouds that hung over Europe. The most formidable of French generals and the flower of the French army were at his mercy. For though Nelson had with him a matchless instrument, it could only do the work of a battle fleet. To destroy the enemy, if at Malta, he needed fireships, gunboats and bomb vessels; to annihilate their transports, if at sea, he must have frigates. The Court of the Two Sicilies, if it would take its courage in its hands, could supply both. " The King of Naples may now have part of the glory in destroying these pests of the human race; and the opportunity, once lost, may never be regained."

But though the timorous Italians sent good wishes and a secret promise of supplies, they would dare no more. Nelson must beat the French before they would stir, even though their craven inertness robbed him of all chance of victory and themselves of survival. Without wasting time, though still bombarding Hamilton with letters, he pressed through the Straits of Messina and, crowding on all sail, hurried southward down the coast of Sicily heading for Malta, where he hoped to catch the enemy at anchor. On the 22nd at the southern point of Sicily off Cape Passaro the
Mutine
fell in with a Genoese brig and learnt from her master that the French had captured Malta from the Knights of St. John—which was true —and—which was not true—had sailed again on the 16th eastward bound.

With the instinct of genius, though his instructions had given him no inkling of it, Nelson had already divined Bonaparte's intention. A few days earlier he had written to Spencer, " If they pass Sicily, I shall believe they are going on their scheme of possessing Alexandria and getting troops to India—a plan, concerted with Tippoo Sahib, by no means so difficult as might at first view be imagined."
¹
His instructions cautioned him against allowing the French to get to the west of him lest they should slip through the Straits of Gibraltar. But he reckoned that with the prevailing westerly winds Bonaparte's vast and unwieldy armada had little
chance of beating back to the Atl
antic. Egypt, on the other hand, would be an easy run for it. If it left Malta on the 16th, it must be already nearly at Alexandria.

Nelson therefore decided to act. He called a council of his captains, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Men like himself in the prime of life—their average age was under forty—they were little given to hesitation. They endorsed his opinion that all the probabilities—the seizure of Malta, the reported equipment of the expedition, the direction of the wind and the enemy's point of sailing—pointed to Bonaparte's having gone to Egypt. The safe course was for the British to await events where they were: guarding the two Sicilies, keeping the weather gauge and making sure that the enemy could not get to westward. A lesser man than Nelson, playing for his professional career and safety from official censure, would have taken it. But to have done so would have been to abandon that for which he had set out: the annihilation of the French fleet and transports. With the stake nothing less than the future of the world, he at once set course for Alexandria.