Nelson: The Essential Hero (16 page)

So
fast
did the small force move that, by noon on the day after landing, they were encamped 2,500 yards from the citadel. Nelson’s ‘Agamemnons’ had disembarked and brought up to their lines eight of the ship’s 24-pounders, which were later augmented by a number of large mortars supplied by Sir William Hamilton from Naples. It took a further six days for the seamen to haul the guns up to the heights commanding the town. The means by which this was done astonished not only the Corsican patriots who had joined the British force, but even Sir Gilbert Elliot, future Viceroy of the island, who was an admiring witness of the versatility of Jack Tar :
^;
They fastened great straps round the rocks, and then fastened to the straps the largest and most powerful purchases, or pullies, and tackle, that are used aboard a man-of-war. The cannon were placed on a sledge at one end of the tackle, the men walked down hill with the other end of the tackle.’

In somewhat the same way that they sent topmasts and spars aloft, the seamen hoisted the guns that w
^r
ere to dominate Bastia. Eight days after the landing, the batteries opened fire. Lord Hood w
^r
as Iving off in the
Victory
and, from the heights above, Nelson and his sailors could see
Agamemnon
at anchor in the bay. The French Commissioner was still confident of the strength of his position and, when Hood sent off a flag of truce before engagement commenced, he made the reply: 'I have hot shot for your ships, and bayonets for your men.’ Nelson, in a letter to Fanny dated 22 April, wrote : ‘My ship lays on the north side the town with some frigates and Lord Hood on the south side. It is very hard service for my poor seamen, dragging guns up such heights as are scarcely credible. The town and citadel is most amazingly battered and many of their batteries ruined.’ Although he did not mention it at the time, he himself had been wounded just over a week earlier, receiving ‘a sharp cut in the back’.

Bastia held out longer than he had anticipated and it was natural that the issue should prove very worrying, for it was largely on his advice - against that of the Army - that the siege had been initiated. He was also well aware that, while the forces at San Fiorenza were still refusing to co-operate until they had received reinforcements, they would, as soon as Bastia was prepared to surrender, be only too eager to march in and take the glory for themselves. Two further batteries were installed, only 1,000 yards from the citadel, and day after day the cannonading continued, losses on both sides mounting. Five ‘Agamemnons’ were killed - ‘they are not the men to keep out of the way’. On 1 May, he wrote to Fanny that he was confident Bastia would fall, adding ‘all my joys of victory are two fold to me knowing how you must partake of them, only recollect a brave man dies but once, a coward all his life long. We cannot escape death, and should it happen to me in this place, recollect it is the will of Him in whose hands are the issues of life and death.’ There can be no doubt that these words were not written just to reassure his wife, or to console her if he fell: they represent the essential core of his nature and his belief.

Extracts from the journal that Nelson kept at this time show quite clearly that the siege of Bastia was not so simple an affair as has sometimes been made out: ‘Our batteries kept up an incessant fire. . . . On the 16th they got a thirteen-inch mortar which kept up a constant fire through the night . . . three boats attempted to get into the town with powder and provisions; two were taken but one got in . . . the Enemy fired more than usual both night and day. We had also often five shells in the air all at once, going to Bastia.’ But, in the end, on 19 May, the garrison sent out a flag of truce and terms were arranged for the surrender of the town. As Nelson had expected, the army from San Fiorenza now arrived on the heights above: their presence, at long last, gave the defenders the excuse of honourably surrendering to a large force. It would have been somewhat ignominious to have capitulated to what was no more than a handful of sailors and soldiers. In effect, though, this was what had really happened. It reinforced Nelson’s long-held opinion that ‘one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen; had this been an English town,

I am sure it would not have been taken by them. They have allowed us to batter it without once making an effort to drive us away. I may truly say that this has been a Naval Expedition; our boats prevented anything from getting in by sea and our sailors hauling up great guns, and then fighting them on shore.’ Fanny’s son, Josiah, whom Nelson had kept out of the way most of the time aboard the
Agamemnon
, being determined - despite Josiah’s eagerness to be in the field - that if she were to lose her husband she should not lose a son as well, now had the honour of being put at the head of the British Grenadiers who were taking over the citadel and strong-posts of Bastia. The British forces engaged had lost 19 dead and 37 wounded, the enemy over 200 dead and 540 wounded, ‘most of whom are dead’. 4,500 men in a strongly fortified place had laid down their arms to a mixed force of 1,200 troops and seamen.

With San Fiorenza and Bastia in his hands, Lord Hood now only needed Calvi on the west side of the island to give him control of Corsica. He would then have a pistol pointed at the heart of southern France, and adequate bases for his ships from which to keep watch and ward over Toulon. Calvi, small though it was - and remains -was nevertheless a place strong by nature and heavily fortified. It presented more challenge to the attackers than Bastia had done, for the terrain behind the port and town was arid, rocky and barren. It was not until mid-June that the
Agamemnon
together with two smaller warships and a convoy of transports and storeships could be got into a position not far from Revellato Point, some three miles to the west of their objective. This time, however, there could be no doubt about the willingness of the Army to co-operate, and the subsequent attack on Calvi can truly be called a ‘combined operation’, Nelson being in charge of the naval forces and General the Hon. Charles Stuart of the military. Fortunately both men - despite subsequent disagreements - were matched in their eagerness and efficiency. The disembarkation, despite the difficulties of an iron-bound coast with uncharted rocks and great depths between them, went ahead swiftly. But the savage weather off western Corsica was to lead to many difficulties: on one occasion, when only part of the landing force was ashore, the ships were compelled to stand out to sea rather than be trapped on a lee shore. Those who know the difficulties of putting troops, guns, supplies and all the impedimenta of war ashore on a hostile coast from modem landing craft and transports, can have some small idea of what all this entailed when the ships themselves were dependent upon canvas and the boats upon men at the oars. A combined operation in the eighteenth century was an astounding test of men and of ingenuity.

Nelson’s natural pride in the taking of Bastia received a severe blow. In Hood’s despatch he was credited with no more than ‘the command and direction of the seamen in landing the guns, mortars, and stores’, while Captain Anthony Hunt was given credit for having ‘commanded the batteries’. This was quite untrue, and Captain Serocold, a friend of Nelson, soon to be killed in the attack on Calvi, was so infuriated by the inaccuracy and injustice of the despatch as to have been prepared to publish a report on his own account to the effect that Hunt ‘never was on a battery, or even rendered any service during the siege’. The fact was that Hunt, who had lost his ship through no fault of his own, was in need of the assistance that a favourable report from Hood could give him. Hood himself knew well enough the true circumstances of the case, and was prepared - as now at Calvi - to give Nelson the position of command which he had genuinely earned. Even so, it was galling, and the fact that General Stuart was to take nearly all the credit for himself on the successful conclusion of the attack on Calvi was to add further bitterness to Nelson’s feelings. Yet, as before in the West Indies, where he had seen the credit for his dutifully carrying out the Navigation Act assigned to others who had, in fact, opposed him, so now he did little more than comment that ‘We will fag ourselves to death before any blame shall lie at our doors.’ He was immensely happy in the achievements of his seamen : ‘By computation we may be supposed to have dragged one 26-pounder with its ammunition and every requisite for making a battery upwards of 80 miles, 17 of which were up a very steep mountain.’ When it is recollected that the siege of Calvi was undertaken in midsummer, the achievements of the attacking force are remarkable. The smiling face of Corsica, which the men had known on the east coast at Bastia in the spring, was now eclipsed by Mediterranean man’s enemy - the summer. The wild flowers, the scent of the tangled maquis under the dews of dawn, those had been invigorating: they now yielded to the harsh realities of a land where malaria was rife and where the sun was no friend but an implacable enemy. The naval officers in their cocked hats and blue frock-coats, knee-breeches and stockings, the sailors in their miscellaneous but heavy sea-going clothes and tarpaulin hats, the military encumbered by uniforms that were suitable for northern Europe or for ceremonial parades, all suffered grievously from the heat. In one of his letters to the Duke of Clarence, whom he regularly kept posted as to his actions, Nelson described the conditions:

It is now what we call the dog-days, here it is termed the Lion-Sun; no person can endure it: we have upwards of one thousand sick out of two thousand, and others not much better than so many phantoms. We have lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy. I am here the reed among the oaks: all the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength for them to fasten upon. I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low.

It was not long after writing this that Nelson received the wound to his right eye which was to trouble him for the rest of his days.

The military, following their accustomed habit which Nelson had long ago deplored of advancing their trenches and batteries by pedantic zigzags, were now commanding the town, which meant of course that their advanced batteries were well within range of the enemy fire. Nelson had been knocked down, but uninjured, only the day before by a shot landing close by him, but this time he was not so lucky. On 10 July at 7 a.m., being up as usual for the day’s early bombardment, he was standing in the parapet between two embrasures when a shot struck it and he was hit by sand, stones and splinters kicked up from the merlon. Blood poured from a deep cut made over his right eyebrow while the eye itself was damaged. (Much later, when the Royal College of Surgeons examined him for compensation, it was agreed that the wound was ‘fully equal to the loss of the eye’.) The surgeons who now attended him held out hopes that he might get his sight back in some degree. His resilience and courage were extraordinary, for the very same evening with his head throbbing and a field-dressing over his eye he wrote to Lord Hood : ‘I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge from my writing.’ To Hood’s subsequent inquiry as to whether he needed relieving at his post he replied that his eye was better and that he was quite capable of superintending the work. Knowing how much Fanny constantly worried about his safety, he did not tell her the news until over a month later when he was back aboard the
Agamemnon
off Leghorn :

You may hear, therefore as it is all past I may tell you that on the 10th of July last a shot having struck our battery the splinters and stones from it struck me most severely in the face and breast. Although the blow was so severe as to occasion a great flow of blood from my head, yet I most fortunately escaped by only having my right eye nearly deprived of its sight. It was cut down, but is as far recovered as to be able to distinguish light from darkness, but as to all the purpose of use it is gone. However, the blemish is nothing, not to be perceived unless told. The pupil is nearly the size of the blue part, I don’t know the name.

The pathological result of the injury was never fully established, but modern eye specialists have conjectured that he received either a haemorrhagic retinal lesion (a ruptured choroid or eyeball) or retinal detachment; in either case followed by gradual optic atrophy. Henceforth the eye was as good as useless to him, although many who met him afterwards were unable to distinguish any difference between his good eye and his bad. He did not, as is sometimes supposed, wear an eye-patch over the right eye because it was disfigured, but he had a green shade made to protect his
left
eye from the glare of the Mediterranean sun and sea. In later years he always wore a green shade covering both eyes under the brim of his cocked hat. This is shown in an anonymous contemporary portrait, and can also be verified at Westminster Abbey where there is a cocked hat made by James Lock of St James’s Street, London, with this shade attached. Later popular engravings often show him with an eye-patch, indifferently over the left or over the right eye. (Contrary to popular belief, his statue in Trafalgar Square is accurate - showing him with no eye-patch.)

While the British ashore were suffering from fever and the climate generally, the besieged were suffering the inevitable shortages of both food and ammunition which must always befall those who have need of sea-borne supplies, but are blockaded by an enemy having control of the sea. On 28 July, the French Governor sent word that he would surrender within twenty-five days if he had had no succour or reinforcements. Four vessels did in fact manage to slip through Hood’s blockade but, although they had some grain aboard, they had no ammunition, and the garrison’s magazines were almost empty. Calvi had never been designed to repel a long siege but only to hold out for a limited time against a sea-borne attack. This was where Stuart and Nelson, with their troops and batteries ringing round the city from the rear, made its fall almost inevitable. On 10 August the town surrendered. It was only just in time from the point of view of the British, for General Stuart himself was sick, Nelson half blind, and the men were dropping from malaria like flies. It is doubtful if the siege could have been prosecuted for a further fortnight.