Nelson (84 page)

In the other corner, across from the robust redcoat, stood the slight, blue-coated figure of Horatio Nelson, captain of the
Agamemnon
. He worked to a different beat, forever on the move, prowling for opportunities and victories. No enemy could show him a weakness that would be missed. His letters rang with the problems of the French, with their irresolution, fears and shortages, and they also exuded a heart-raising confidence – perhaps overconfidence. For though Nelson’s policy avoided despair and defeatism, it too was flawed. It risked overextending men and inviting a drubbing, and if Moore overrated his opponents Nelson underestimated them. The French commander, St Michel, spoke highly of his soldiers: ‘Their enthusiasm is such that even the wounded are eager to leave hospital to join in the battle,’ he wrote. Civilians, including women and children, would help to repair broken fortifications and batteries. Nelson expected that the French would quickly succumb to a two-fisted attack. ‘We shall, in time, accomplish the taking [of] Bastia, I have no doubt, in the way we proposed to assault it, by bombardment and cannonading, joined to a close blockade of the harbour.’ But he would be surprised by his enemy’s endurance.
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The differences between Moore and Nelson were now to be tested. As Nelson had requested, he was rewarded with the responsibility of leading the land attack, alongside Lieutenant Colonel Villettes, who headed the seven hundred soldiers Hood had raised. Nelson liked and respected Villettes as an easy-mannered gentleman and ‘a most excellent officer’, considering him the ablest soldier in the army. From a French émigré family, he had lived for forty years and served in the army for almost twenty of them, two as a lieutenant colonel. Apparently he enjoyed his profession, for he had abandoned a career in the law to follow it, and at Toulon won the praise of superiors. When the task force sailed from St Fiorenzo on 25 March it was at least well officered. Nelson bundled Captain Paget and Lieutenant Alexander Duncan off to Naples for the necessary military supplies, and tightened the blockade of Bastia. The
Tartar
and the
Scout
brig were anchored on the flanks of the town, guard boats sealed the harbour mouth by rowing back and forth, and the
Fox
and a few
gunboats threw occasional shots at the defences. Corsican volunteers climbed aboard the
Agamemnon
to replace temporarily men earmarked to work with the troops ashore.
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The talking was done and it was time to fight, but on the eve of the attack Nelson received important new intelligence. It was bad news. The number of troops waiting for him in Bastia was far greater than anyone had supposed – four thousand, perhaps more. Nelson now knew he was attacking not only well-placed positions, but also superior numbers of soldiers. When the flagship
Victory
appeared in the offing on 2 April with the first of the larger ships assigned to the blockade, Nelson deliberately kept the new information to himself. Even at this hour, when Hood had staked his reputation and forces on Nelson’s judgement, he feared the attack might still be called off.
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For Moore the tidings would have justified his caution. He doubted that the army and navy together could take Bastia, and prophesied disaster. ‘Without more good luck than can be expected some misfortune will happen,’ he said.
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Nelson thought otherwise, and that nothing could be gained without being ventured. ‘I feel for the honour of my country,’ he said, ‘and had rather be beat than not make the attack. If we do not try we never can be successful. I own I have no fears for the final issue: it will be conquest . . .’
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An impressive amount of sail lay off Bastia on 3 April. Six ships of the line, one of them the
Agamemnon
, two frigates and a brig formed a threatening display, but at the masthead of the
Victory
, Hood’s impressive flagship, flew a flag of truce. A boat pulled out with a last offer to spare the town. Perhaps the admiral was willing to give the garrison passage to France, or accept a declaration in favour of the monarchy. It hardly mattered, for the appeal went unheeded and before the day was out another flag was running up. It was red, and everybody knew it meant the contest had begun.
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The larger British ships strung out in a huge crescent to the south, beyond the enemy guns, while the
Scout
brig and some gunboats and launches edged forward to close the harbour and entertain the enemy batteries and gunboats. The greatest threat to the inshore blockade (managed by a big, good-humoured Canadian named Captain Benjamin Hallowell) was the nearby island of Capraia, where French ships were
accustomed to shelter. Even before the British net closed around Bastia a few panic-stricken merchants shot out and made for Capraia. Hood sent Captain Wolseley in the
Imperieuse
to watch the island, ready to intercept any more vessels that tried to run to or from Corsica.
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Hood controlled the entire operation from the
Victory
, but the landing party was entrusted to Nelson and Villettes and the
Agamemnon
was generally found hovering maternally offshore near their camp. As a post-captain Nelson outranked Villettes, a military lieutenant colonel, but in a striking contrast to recent interservice relations the two men stuck to their own spheres of influence and became close comrades in arms. In fact, the only demarcation disputes occurred among the naval officers serving ashore. Verbally Hood had authorised Nelson to command all the seamen cooperating with Villettes, but the captain’s written instructions were clumsily worded. They gave Nelson charge of the seamen ‘attached to the batteries’, as if sailors otherwise employed thereabouts were not his responsibility. There was some difficulty, therefore, when Anthony Hunt, a junior captain, appeared. Hunt had served under Nelson before, and Horatio conceded him ‘a most exceedingly good young man’, but he was also one of the admiral’s favourites and his purpose was unclear. Hood assured Nelson that Hunt had no distinct authority, and was entirely subject to Nelson’s direction, but the unnecessary confusion would have unfortunate results.
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Villettes and Nelson went ashore on the 3rd, preparing for an embarkation of men, ordnance and stores during the hours of darkness. In the early hours of the following morning boatload after boatload of redcoats made for the shingle beach three miles north of Bastia and near the tower of Miomo Nelson had captured less than two months before. There were 853 soldiers of the 11th, 25th, 30th and 60th regiments and the Royal Artillery, as well as 218 marines, 112 chasseurs and 250 seamen. The total force amounted to 1,500 and though the work was going to be dangerous there was considerable cheer. Even fourteen-year-old William Hoste had volunteered to accompany Nelson ashore, but the captain kept him aboard the
Agamemnon
with the rest of his young gentlemen.
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But there was no restraining the old admiral whose attack it was. Hood rose every day before dawn and inspired the whole force. He had himself rowed ashore in his barge, oblivious of the enemy shells splashing around, and no sooner were his feet on land than he scrambled up the hill like a mountain sheep to inspect the site selected
for the batteries. Fourteen hundred armed Corsicans were there to pay homage to their liberator, and Hood pronounced himself satisfied. He believed that Bastia would surrender within ten days of a bombardment being opened, while Elliot, who accompanied him, reported ‘the men . . . in the highest spirits, and the officers . . . very confident of success, which is rendered the more probable both by the destitute conditions and the ill disposition and temper of the garrison, as well as the inhabitants’. From the beginning everyone understood that success rested not simply upon one operation, but upon the simultaneous application of naval and military power to the moral and physical capabilities of the defenders.
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The attack was made upon the northern flank of the town, and the force sweated to reach a position for their batteries, some 2,300 yards from the citadel. Not far ahead the enemy held the tower of Toga, defending the northern approach to the town, and Villettes posted pickets and raised a wooden abattis to guard against any sudden counterattack. The British had tents to the rear of their batteries but no beds or fires. However, despite the dire predictions of some army men back at St Fiorenzo, there were no French sorties. It was a good sign, Nelson thought. Maybe the French were already resigned to defeat. Maybe they felt the risks of counterattacking were just not worth the effort.

Enemy inaction helped, but the job of building the batteries was famously hard labour. Some of the guns were more than nine feet long and weighed three tons, and their small, solid wheels were utterly unsuited to moving on land. With them had to be hauled many tons of powder as well as shot and shell, all landed from the
Agamemnon
and other ships and dragged over broken ground up to the batteries. Daily Nelson’s sailors struggled, slashing their way through scrub and maquis, bridging ravines and blazing crude tracks if there were none. Following the example of Cooke’s men at St Fiorenzo, they made sledges for the guns and hauled them over the uneven ground by slinging huge straps around rocks and using them as pulleys. By one means or another the tars were soon ‘dragging guns up such heights as are scarcely creditable [credible]’ with enormous willpower. Their goal was a rocky crag 1,000 yards from the nearest enemy redoubt (Cabanelle), 1,800 from a twenty-four-pound battery at the north end of the town and 2,300 from the citadel. There Nelson’s men stacked sandbags and casks and packed them with earth to make redoubts, laid gun platforms and mounted an elaborate battery consisting of
four mortars, a howitzer, two carronades, a field piece and eight naval cannon, including five twenty-four pounders. On 9 April the French had seen enough, and fired the first shots from mortars and cannons. Drums beat an alarm in the British camp and some tents were torn up in a long bombardment, but not a man was hurt.
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On 11 April, Nelson and Villettes were ready to reply. Again Hood summoned the garrison, but this time his messenger was insulted, and Lacombe St Michel, who commanded in Bastia, brazenly replied that ‘he had hot shot for our ships, and bayonets for our troops, [and] that when two-thirds of his troops were killed he should then trust to the generosity of the English’. The British were not surprised. St Michel was not a man to be easily cowed, and served a particularly unforgiving government that knew how to deal with failures. Indeed, one argument for supporting the blockade of Bastia with a formal siege was to create additional pretexts for an honourable surrender. But that time had not yet come. Hood’s red flag rose ominously to his main topgallant mast and English colours were raised over Nelson’s tent, while his men punched the air and gave three rousing cheers. At nine-thirty the British batteries roared, and shot and shells began to hurtle upwards and then to shelve down towards the French positions. The Corsican allies were difficult to manage, but many were crack shots, and they squirmed between boulders to snipe at enemy officers.
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The French bit back, however, and that afternoon the British suffered their first serious reverse. As the frigate
Proselyte
engaged the tower of Toga, which sat on the shore about seven hundred yards from Nelson’s battery, she was hit by red-hot shot. Thick smoke billowed out of her hatchways, and as boats from the fleet rallied round her crew scurried over the side while the ship crackled into flames. She burned to the water’s edge, but two of her officers chose to fight with Nelson on shore rather than quit the contest. One was Captain Walter Serocold, the last man off the doomed frigate, and the other Nelson’s old protégé Commander Joseph Bullen, who had been serving aboard the
Proselyte
as a temporary volunteer. Though badly burned Bullen reported to Nelson’s batteries for duty.
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Inevitably the landing party was soon suffering casualties of its own, and Nelson and Villettes reported twenty-six between 4 and 25 April. The captain of the
Agamemnon
himself was usually found where the fight was hottest and had two remarkable escapes. On 12 April a select gathering ascended a rocky ridge dividing two branches of a
stream that united and fell into the sea south of Toga. The men were Lieutenant Colonel Villettes and Captain Nelson, the leaders of the British assault force, Captain John Clark of the 69th Regiment, normally assigned to the
Agamemnon
but now acting as brigade major ashore, Lieutenant John Duncan and a leader of the Corsican partisans. They were there to see whether the ridge would support another battery, for its summit was five hundred yards nearer the town and commanded the Camp de Cabanelle to the southeast. For a while the men discussed the problems of hauling and siting their guns, oblivious to a persistent fire of musketry, round and grape spitting at them from behind the wall of the Cabanelle a few hundred yards or so away. Their reconnaissance completed, they were about to retire when a cannon shot ploughed straight into them. Clark was glancing over Nelson’s right shoulder towards the Cabanelle when the ball wrenched off his right arm and part of his side. Though fearfully mutilated he survived, but the Corsican chief was killed outright. Nelson himself was untouched.
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A week later Horatio sustained the first of many wounds he would receive in the line of duty. Again he was in the van. On the 13th he had begun to build two new advanced batteries, consisting of five cannons and two or three mortars situated close to the seaside where they could fire upon the Toga tower at close range. After days of heaving guns, ammunition and materiel into place, the seamen opened fire at daylight on the 21st, battering the tower and Cabanelle and raining missiles upon another battery the French had established near the government house. The town battery was soon knocked out of action and its gunners had to be flogged by their officers to be kept at their posts.
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