Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (32 page)

by whom she had always stood loyally, even when most to her disadvantage; by whom she was always to stand; whom, if that French navy fell in with them, she might possibly never see again. " My mother," she wrote when all was over, " is at Palermo, longing to see her Emma. You can't think how she is loved and respected by all. She has adopted a mode of living that is charming. She has good apartments in our house, always lives with us, dines, etc. etc. Only when she does not like it (for example at great dinners) she herself refuses, and has always a friend to dine with her; and the Signora Madre dell' Ambasciatrice is known all over Palermo, the same as she was at Naples. The Queen has been very kind to her in my absence, and went to see her, and told her she ought to be proud of her glorious and energick daughter, that has done so much in these last suffering months." Other chords in her being might be snapped asunder and replaced, but at least this pure note of daughterly devotion would never fail.

And if Emma was at once happy and tormented, so now was Nelson. He was racked alike by hopes and fears. His love for her was gradually vanquishing his allegiance to his wife, and his heart was fast triumphing over his conscience. He had not yet persuaded himself that his love accorded with the scheme divine, that his formal marriage was no longer consecrated, and that to profane it was not to profane a sacrament. It was barely a year since Captain Hal-lowell had presented him with the coffin framed out of his Egyptian spoils—a memento mori indeed. Every one remembers the strain of dejection about this date in his home letters, which have been constantly cited from Southey. " There is," he wrote, " no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile." He protested the same to his

old friend Davison, adding that his sole wish was to " sink with honour into the grave." On the one side beckoned the French enemy and Emma, on the other the offended Fanny, his pious father, and the call of God.

While, however, both the cause of his heart and the voice that it loved were thus pleading with its doubts and anxieties, vexation also spurred him into irretrievable decision. Lord Keith's interfering summons to Minorca had reached him. These orders he resented and disobeyed, as he had so often disobeyed unwarrantable orders before. Minorca was a bagatelle compared with the big issues now at stake, and Minorca, moreover, was by this time comparatively safe. " I will take care," he was soon to write, " that no superior fleet shall annoy it, but many other countries are entrusted to my care." Jacobinism, the French fleet—these were the dangers for Britain and for Europe. His reply was that the " best defence " was to " place himself alongside the French." He appealed from Lord St. Vincent's meddlesome successor to Lord St. Vincent. " I cannot think myself justified in exposing the world—I may almost say — to be plundered by these miscreants ... I trust your lordship will not think me wrong . . . for agonised indeed was the mind of your lordship's faithful and affectionate servant." These were no sophistries, and " wrong" St. Vincent certainly never held him. It was not long before he learned that Lord Keith himself had sailed in search of the fleet which unluckily he never found. Nelson still believed Naples to be that fleet's objective, and in this conviction many private advices supported him. But more than all, his resolve to vindicate royalty against Jacobinism was strengthened by the fact that at this very moment his own, and Emma's, grave suspicions concerning Cardinal

Ruffo's misuse of his powers were being strikingly confirmed by new and startling reports; while at the same time another Austrian success at Spezzia had fortified afresh the cause of loyalty. He discerned the moment for reclaiming the hotbed of Jacobinism. His mind was fixed. He would go.

On June 13, then, he embarked the young Crown Prince in the Foudroyant and hastened off once again, while the Hamiltons remained behind. The King had apparently forbidden the Queen to revisit the scene of disgrace, and reserved his own appearance for the necessity which Ruffo's double-dealing, that he still half-discredited, might entail. But on learning definite news near Maritime that the French fleet in full force had at length got out of Toulon, and was now actually bound for the south coast, Nelson at once tacked, and once more returned to Palermo to gain time for Ball's and Duckworth's further reinforcements. He arrived the next day, and, to the Queen's infinite surprise, landed her son, who was at once taken by her to his father at Colli. Though Nelson still feared for Sicily, he had hoped to have re-departed immediately, but calms and obstacles intervened. Now that he was certain of his mission, he welcomed the company and invaluable aid of the Hamiltons, whose entreaties had overborne his consideration for their health and safety. Yet even now he would not receive them until he had made a fourth cruise of hurried survey and final preparation to the islands of Maritimo and Ustica. He started, therefore, on June 16, but five mornings afterwards he again heard from Hamilton the momentous certainty that Ruffo had dared to conclude a definite armistice with the Neapolitan rebels; while he also learned that the Jacobins were bragging that his return to Palermo was due to fear of the French fleet. The policy of the Cardinal and the insolence of the

rebels allowed not a moment to be lost. Forthwith he left his squadron once more and reached Palermo in the afternoon. A council was immediately held. Ruffo, who, despite the despatches heralding Nelson's voyage, had probably counted on his many false starts, received warning of his imminent approach; the Ham-iltons, in the full flush of excitement, were conveyed on board the Foudroyant; Nelson, still longing for that unconscionable fleet and reinvested by the King with unlimited powers, started at once to cancel the infamous compact. That same evening he had rejoined his command off Ustica. By noon on the 22nd the united squadron weighed anchor for Naples—" stealing on," wrote Hamilton to Acton, "with light winds," and " I believe the business will soon be done."

These dates and details have been minutely followed, as tending to establish that what really decided Nelson's movements was the dearest wish of his heart— the honour and interest of Great Britain. After suppressing the enemies of all authority and order, he still hoped to fall in with the long-hunted French fleet, and to deal a death-blow to the universal enemy. All along, his convictions and motives must be taken into account before the tribunal of history. It would never have been insinuated that he was a renegade to duty in making Palermo the base of his many operations, and the Neapolitan dynasty the touchstone of his country's cause, if Lady Hamilton had not been in Sicily; in Sicily he neither tarried nor dallied. To estimate his conduct, one should inquire if his policy could have been called dereliction supposing her to have been eliminated from its scene. And what applies to him in these matters henceforward applies to Emma, whose whole soul is fast becoming coloured by his. For a space she must now act a minor, though by no means, as will soon appear, a supernumerary part, as his col-

league in the real tragedy that now opens before us.

Thus at last he, with the Hamiltons, set sail on an errand which has constantly been described as tarnishing his fame.

Mr. Gutteridge's scholarlike and impartial review of all the intricate facts and documents has proved that Nelson neither exceeded his powers nor violated his conscience. In championing the royal house of Naples he was as entirely consistent with the declared policy of his country as with his own convictions. His error, if any, was one of judgment. In rebellions clemency is often the best policy, and proscription is always the worst. Happy indeed would it have been for Naples, and for Nelson, if during the next two months the King had not intervened as director, inquisitor, and hangman, if Cardinal Ruffo had not favoured the nobles and wished to restore the feudal system.

Before the Foudroyant proceeds further, let us glance at the intervening events in Naples.

In that citadel of turbulence much had again happened, and was happening to the court's knowledge, ere Nelson weighed anchor at Palermo. Before May even, the successful blockade of Corfu by the Russians and Turks had largely cleared Ruffb's conquering course. The Austrians and Russians had prepared to drive the French from Upper Italy. In May, General Macdonald had already beaten a skilful retreat to the Po, leaving only a small detachment behind him to garrison the Neapolitan and Capuan castles. Benvenuto had welcomed the loyalists. By early June the Cardinal, close to the city, had succeeded in intercepting all communications by land. Schipani, a royalist officer of distinction, had disembarked his troops at Torre Annunziata. The Republican fleet, commanded by Caracciolo, now a rebel against his sovereign, had

avoided close quarters; while that traitor, by compulsion as he pleaded, who two months ago had quitted Sicily in favour with his master, had even "fired on the flag of the frigate Minerva.

By the I3th of June—amid the solemn rites of the Lazzaroni's other patron, St. Antonio—Ruffo, with his miscellaneous forty thousand, gave battle on the side of Ponte Delia Maddalena, and won. Duke Roc-caromana, the people's old favourite, was now one of his generals, and the populace, tired of bloodshed and the " patriots," rejoiced at the hope of a royal restoration. The young Pepe, a boy-prisoner, has left an account of the terrible scenes that he witnessed. He saw the wretched captives, stripped and streaming with blood, being dragged along to confinement in the public granary by the bridge. He heard the Lazza-roni, " who used to look so honest, and to melt as their mountebanks recited the woes of ' Rinaldo,' shrieking and howling." He watched the clergy whipping the rabble with their words, till they threw stones at the miserable prisoners. Some of them Ruffo had to protect from brutal assaults. These were thrown into hospitals, all filth and disorder; while others feigned insanity to gain even this doubtful privilege. He beheld Vincenzo Ruvo, the " Cato " of the " patriots," and Jerocades, their " Father," bruised and bound; and he marked, huddled and draggled among their comrades, the " four poets," feebly striving to animate their starved spirits by snatches of broken song. He learned that the Castellamare garrison had also succumbed, but, above all, that Ruffo and Micheroux, a most intriguing agent for his Russian allies, were at last ready to grant a demand expressed by some of the " patriots " for a " truce " so as to end this pandemonium, and to arrange some terms of " capitulation " for the castles still in rebel occupation.

Terms of any kind the Lazzaroni, on their side, vehemently resisted; Ruffo was even accused of caballing to place his own brother on the throne. Nelson's own views of such unsanctioned capitulation had already been strikingly exemplified by his manifesto at Malta in the previous October—a point to which special attention should be drawn. Capitulation the French still stoutly rejected. Mejean, commandant of the French garrison in St. Elmo, still defended the dominating fortress, from which Ruffo would now have to dislodge him at the risk of the town's destruction. Their single hope was for a glimpse of the French fleet, which was as. much the object of their yearning as Nelson's. Counting on this, in their sore straits they had refused every conciliatory overture. Counting on this again, Mejean's aim was to gain time by the threat that he would fire on the town unless Ruffo forbore to attack him. When on June 24 the first sight of Nelson's ships was descried in the distance, the " patriots " cheered to the echo. They deemed it was St. Louis to the rescue. To their dismay it proved St. George.

Micheroux's name, Ruffo's truce, and Nelson's arrival must recall us to what Captain Foote of the Seahorse had been doing in the interval. He appears as no diplomatist, but a most humane and honourable seaman. His powers had been strictly limited. He, like Troubridge, was a suppressor of rebellion. He was to co-operate with the Russians in the Neapolitan blockade. He does not seem to have been told by Ruffo —who had already received the second of several warnings —that since the insurgents had rejected initial offers, no armistice whatever could be entertained. In the event, Ruffo and the Russians overbore him.

Already, on June 13 and 14, Foote had been assisting Ruffo and his generals in a series of battles on the

coast, all of which had proved decisive discomfitures for the rebels. Throughout, Ruffo trembled not only for the town, but lest the Franco-Hispanian fleet should be on them like a thief in the night. In disorder both of troops and plans, amid Jacobin advisers, he temporised, and pressed on Foote the need of terms. He also dreaded the results of the mob-violence displayed in those awful scenes on the Ponte Maddalena. " The duty," he informed Acton on June 21, just before the capitulations were signed, " of controlling a score of uneducated and subordinate chiefs, all intent on plunder, murder, and violence, is so terrible and complicated, that it is absolutely beyond my powers. . . . If the surrender of the two castles is obtained, I hope to restore complete quiet." He may have used the imminence of the French fleet as a bogey to.frighten his coadjutors, and the imminence of his own attack on St. Elmo as a lever for persuading the French commandant into assent. Fear for the city, for the situation, possessed him. St. Elmo was his object, but he dreaded the danger from its guns. He deemed his unauthorised compact warranted. Two days before it was in train Foote had offered asylum on board the Seahorse to the Dell' Uovo garrison, then about to be stormed. Its answer was an indignant repulse: " We want the indivisible Republic; for the Republic we will die! Eloignez-vous, citoyen, vite, vite, vite!" The same day Ruffo himself told Foote that St. Elmo must be assailed; it was useless now to think of capitulation. He had previously hoped that both French and rebels might surrender to the sailor, though they disdained an ecclesiastic. And yet within the next few days he was in close if unwilling league with Micheroux (the King's minister attached to the Russian forces), whom he feared to disoblige, and had sanctioned his arrangement with the rebels, which was subject to Mej can's