A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan - The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2)

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From newspapers received off Ushant he first learned of Calder's
battle, and the public dissatisfaction with the results. He had
undergone too much frustration and anxiety himself not to feel for an
officer who had made a mistake, although it may safely be said that
Calder's mistake was not only one Nelson could not have made, but was
the exact opposite of the course which Nelson by anticipation had said
he would adopt. He expressed himself in words of generous sympathy. "I
was bewildered by the account of Sir Robert Calder's victory, and the
joy of the event; together with the hearing that _John Bull_ was not
content, which I am sorry for. Who can, my dear Freemantle, command
all the success which our Country may wish? We have fought together,
and therefore well know what it is. I have had the best disposed fleet
of friends, but who can say what will be the event of a battle? and it
most sincerely grieves me, that in any of the papers it should be
insinuated, that Lord Nelson could have done better. I should have
fought the enemy, so did my friend Calder; but who can say that he
will be more successful than another? I only wish to stand upon my own
merits, and not by comparison, one way or the other, upon the conduct
of a brother officer. You will forgive this dissertation, but I feel
upon the occasion." These words, which spoke the whole of his honest
heart, were the more generous, because he believed Calder to be one of
the few professional enemies that he had.

From the place where Villeneuve was met, Nelson reasoned, again, that
the primary intention of the allies, returning from the West Indies,
had been to enter the Straits. "By all accounts I am satisfied their
original destination was the Mediterranean, but they heard frequently
of our track." This persistence in his first view was partly due to
the confidence with which he held to his own convictions,--the defect
of a strong quality,--partly, doubtless, to the fact that Villeneuve
had blundered in his homeward course, and fetched unnecessarily to
leeward of his port, with reference to winds perfectly understood by
seamen of that day. In fact he had no business to be where he brought
up, except on the supposition that he was making for the Straits.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] At noon, January 20, "Mount Santo bore N.W., distant six
leagues."--"_Victory's" Log_. Cape Monte Santo is sixty miles north of the
southern extremity of Sardinia.

[84] On the east coast of Sicily.

[85] Bulkheads are the light partitions which divide cabins, offices, etc.
from the rest of the decks. For battle they are removed to allow freer
communication, and to lessen the risk of fire and splinters.

[86] An island twenty miles west of Sicily.

[87] Author's italics.

[88] March 9th.

[89] Author's italics.

[90] Apparently Gulf of Palmas.

[91] From England.

[92] Sir John Orde.

[93] Orde's squadron never exceeded six ships-of-the-line, while
Villeneuve's numbered eleven without the Spaniards. It will be seen further
on that Nelson blamed Orde for not keeping track of the enemy's movements,
and sending word to him at Gibraltar, and elsewhere, of the direction
taken. As far as the author's information goes, he agrees with this
censure. To fight eleven ships with six could only be justified by extreme
circumstances; but to lose sight of them in spring weather infers even
worse judgment than fighting would. It was of the first importance to learn
the destination of so large a body, considering that the interests of Great
Britain were threatened in directions so diverse as the Channel, the East
Indies, and the West Indies.

[94] Lord Radstock's son had been transferred before this from the
"Victory" to the "Hydra"; but his father did not yet know the fact, and
supposed him with Nelson.

[95] First Lord of the Admiralty, who had very lately succeeded Melville.

[96] An east wind.

[97] The signal flag for a vessel about to sail.

[98] Life of the Rev. A.J. Scott, p. 171.

[99] Ahead, but a little to one side.

[100] Phillimore's Last of Nelson's Captains.

[101] The "Northumberland" and the "Spartiate."

[102] The island immediately north of Martinique.

[103] "The Trench and Spaniards landed 1,000 sick when they arrived at
Martinico, and buried full that number during their stay." Nicolas, vol.
vi. p. 480.

[104] Author's italics.

[105] Author's italics.

[106] One of the easternmost of the Azores.

[107] The report of the American schooner, which saw the allied fleet, June
15th.

[108] Of Biscay.

[109] The extent of Brereton's fault (if at fault) depended, probably, upon
the character and responsibility of the man he had on lookout at so
critical a moment, and the care with which he tested the report made to
him. Brereton did not know of Nelson's arrival, possibly not of his
approach. At the same time men must take the blame of carelessness, when
harm comes of it. Ball, commenting to Nelson upon the incident, said: "I
think orders should be given, that when a fleet is discovered, an officer
should be sent for to witness it, and that one should be at the signal hill
at the rising and setting of the sun. I have often reflected on these
circumstances, and on the little attention generally paid them." As it
stands, the whole affair is a warning to officers, of what results may flow
from errors small in themselves.

CHAPTER XXI.

NELSON'S LAST STAY IN ENGLAND.

AUGUST 19--SEPTEMBER 15, 1805. AGE, 46.

The "Victory" was delayed in quarantine twenty-four hours, when orders
from London directed her release. At 9 P.M. of the 19th of August,
Nelson's flag was hauled down, and he left the ship for Merton, thus
ending an absence of two years and three months. His home being but an
hour's drive from the heart of London, the anxieties of the time, and
his own eagerness to communicate his views and experience, carried him
necessarily and at once to the public offices--to the Admiralty first,
but also to the Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and for War, both of
whom had occasion for the knowledge and suggestions of so competent
and practised an observer. The present head of the Admiralty, Lord
Barham, had succeeded to the office, unexpectedly, upon the sudden
retirement of Melville the previous May. He was a naval officer,
eighty years of age, who since middle life had exchanged the active
sea-going of the profession, for civil duties connected with it. He
had thus been out of touch with it on the military side; and although
Nelson was of course well known to him by reputation and achievement,
he had not that intimate personal experience of his character and
habit of thought, upon which was based the absolute confidence felt by
St. Vincent, and by all others who had seen the great warrior in
active service. "Lord Barham is an almost entire stranger to me,"
wrote Nelson; but after their interview he left with him the journals
in which were embodied the information obtained during his recent
command, with his comments upon the affairs of the Mediterranean in
particular, and, as incidental thereto, of Europe in general. Barham,
who gave proof of great military capacity during his short term of
office, was so much impressed by the sagacity and power of Nelson's
remarks, that he assured the Cabinet he ought by all means to go back
to the Mediterranean; and it may be assumed that the latter's wish so
to do would have been gratified, at the time of his own choosing, had
not other events interposed to carry him away earlier, and to end his
career.

It was upon one of these visits to Ministers that Nelson and
Wellington met for the only time in their lives. The latter had just
returned from a long service in India, reaching England in September,
1805. His account of the interview, transmitted to us by Croker, is as
follows:--

WALMER, October 1st, 1834. We were talking of Lord Nelson, and
some instances were mentioned of the egotism and vanity that
derogated from his character. "Why," said the Duke, "I am not
surprised at such instances, for Lord Nelson was, in different
circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself can vouch,
though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, an
hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the
Colonial Office[110] in Downing Street, and there I was shown
into the little waiting-room on the right hand, where I found,
also waiting to see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom,
from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I
immediately recognised as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I
was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can
call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all
about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as
to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I
happened to say may have made him guess that I was _somebody_,
and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask
the office-keeper who I was, for when he came back he was
altogether a different man, both in manner and matter. All that
I had thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of
the state of this country and of the aspect and probabilities of
affairs on the Continent with a good sense, and a knowledge of
subjects both at home and abroad, that surprised me equally and
more agreeably than the first part of our interview had done; in
fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman. The Secretary
of State kept us long waiting, and certainly, for the last half
or three quarters of an hour, I don't know that I ever had a
conversation that interested me more. Now, if the Secretary of
State had been punctual, and admitted Lord Nelson in the first
quarter of an hour, I should have had the same impression of a
light and trivial character that other people have had; but
luckily I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very
superior man; but certainly a more sudden and complete
metamorphosis I never saw."[111]

This is not the only record that remains to us of those interesting
interviews with Cabinet Ministers, although the most have passed away
unnoted. It was in one of them that he uttered a military opinion, for
whose preservation we are indebted to his own mention of it in a
private letter; an opinion so characteristic of his habits of thought,
his reasoned motives of action, that, although it has before been
quoted, it is fitting to repeat it in his own words and in full.

When he reached England, the naval situation, as far as then known,
was that Napoleon had twenty-one French ships-of-the-line in Brest,
and twenty-eight or nine, French and Spanish, in Ferrol; while
Cornwallis had thirty-five British off Brest. This was the condition
on the 15th of August, when Nelson parted from the fleet off Ushant.
Very soon after his arrival in town, news was received that Villeneuve
had gone to sea from Ferrol, and that Cornwallis, when informed of the
fact, had divided his fleet, with great lack of judgment, keeping
himself seventeen ships to confront the Brest squadron, while eighteen
were sent to look for Villeneuve under the command of Admiral Calder.
In the public discontent with the latter, it was not reassuring to
know that, at a moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he
was again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a
much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, Nelson
called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, on the 23d of
August. "Yesterday," he wrote to Captain Keats, "the Secretary of
State, which is a man who has only sat one solitary day in his office,
and of course knows but little of what is passed, and indeed the
Minister,[112] were all full of the enemy's fleet, and as I am now set
up for a _Conjuror_, and God knows they will very soon find out I am
far from being one, I was asked my opinion, against my inclination,
for if I make one wrong guess the charm will be broken; but this I
ventured without any fear, that if Calder got close alongside their
twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, that by the time the enemy had beat
our fleet soundly, they would do us no harm this year."

This acute perception of the reason why it was at times desirable and
proper to hurl a smaller though more efficient force against superior
numbers, content that the latter, as a factor, were for the campaign
annihilated,--this realization of the possible fruitfulness of a
defeat, or rather, of a battle wisely lost, as contrasted with what
Jomini calls the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win
them,--is one of the most marked and decisive features of Nelson's
genius as a general officer. It recurs over and over again, and at all
periods, in his correspondence, this clear and full appreciation of
the relation of the parts to the whole.[113] It underlay his sustained
purpose during the long pursuit of the preceding months, that, if he
found the allied squadron, "they would not part without a battle."
Whatever else the result, that particular division would do no harm
that year, and with it necessarily fell the great combination,
whatever that might be, of which it was an essential factor. "The
event would have been in the hands of Providence," he wrote to Barham;
"but we may without, I hope, vanity, believe that the enemy would have
been fit for no active service after such a battle." There is wanting
to the completeness of this admirable impulse only the steadying
resolve that he would bide his time, so as, to use Napoleon's phrase,
to have the most of the chances on his side when he attacked. This
also we know he meant to do. "I will _wait_, till they give me an
opportunity too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the
shores of Europe." In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise
of the highest order of ability. This union of desperate energy with
calculating wariness was in him not so much a matter of reasoning,
though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of
nature,--genius, in short. Reasoning of a very high order illuminates
Nelson's mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not
in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge
the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward
conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action. "Responsibility,"
said St. Vincent, "is the test of a man's courage." Emergency, it may
be said, is the test of his faith in his beliefs.

While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his counsels, and
drew encouragement from his indomitable confidence, the people in the
streets looked up to him with that wistful and reverent dependence
which does not wholly understand, but centres all its trust upon a
tried name. They knew what he had done in the now distant past, and
they had heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had
returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of the
empire. They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful about
invasion, and that in some undefined way Nelson had stood, and would
yet stand, between them and harm. The rapidity of his movements left
little interval between the news of his being back at Gibraltar and
the announcement of his arrival at Portsmouth, which was not generally
expected. On the 19th of August, a day after the "Victory" anchored at
Spithead, Lord Radstock wrote: "'T is extraordinary no official
accounts have been received from Lord Nelson since the 27th of July.
He then hinted that he might perhaps go to Ireland; nevertheless, we
have had no tidings of him on that coast. I confess I begin to be
fearful that he has worried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot
bear the idea of showing himself again to the world, until he shall
have struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making him
run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures. That such
unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus evaporate in air
is truly melancholy."

If any doubt of the approval of his countrymen mingled with the
distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed the enemy, he was
touchingly undeceived. As soon as the "Victory" and his flag were made
out, the people flocked to Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of
the town and other points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome.
As the barge pulled to the shore, and upon landing, he was greeted
with loud and long-continued cheering. In London the same
demonstrations continued whenever he was recognized in public. "Lord
Nelson arrived a few days ago," wrote Radstock. "He was received in
town almost as a conqueror, and was followed round by the people with
huzzas. So much for a great and good name most nobly and deservedly
acquired." "I met Nelson in a mob in Piccadilly," wrote Minto at the
same time, "and got hold of his arm, so that I was mobbed too. It is
really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration, and love and
respect of the whole world; and the genuine expression of all these
sentiments at once, from gentle and simple, the moment he is seen. It
is beyond anything represented in a play or in a poem of fame." In
these few days was concentrated the outward reward of a life spent in
the service of his country. During them, Nelson was conspicuously the
first man in England,--first alike in the love of the people and in
importance to the State.

On the private side, also, his life for this brief respite was
eminently happy, marred only by the prospect of a speedy departure,
the signal for which sounded even sooner than was expected. By his own
account, he was only four times in London, and all the moments that
could be spared from external calls he spent at Merton, where there
gathered a large family party, including all his surviving brothers
and sisters, with several of their children. "I cannot move at
present," he writes on the 31st of August, in declining an invitation,
"as all my family are with me, and my stay is very uncertain; and,
besides, I have refused for the present all invitations." "I went to
Merton on Saturday" (August 24th), wrote Minto, "and found Nelson just
sitting down to dinner, surrounded by a family party, of his brother
the Dean, Mrs. Nelson, their children, and the children of a sister.
Lady Hamilton at the head of the table, and Mother Cadogan[114] at the
bottom. I had a hearty welcome. He looks remarkably well and full of
spirits. His conversation is a cordial in these low times. Lady
Hamilton has improved and added to the house and the place extremely
well, without his knowing she was about it. He found it already done.
She is a clever being, after all: the passion is as hot as ever."

Over all hung, unseen, the sword of Damocles. Nelson himself seems to
have been possessed already by vague premonitions of the coming end,
which deepened and darkened around him as he went forward to his fate.
The story told of his saying to the upholsterer, who had in charge the
coffin made from the mast of the "Orient," that a certificate of its
identity should be engraved on the lid, because he thought it highly
probable that he might want it on his return, is, indeed, but a
commonplace, light-hearted remark, which derives what significance it
has purely from the event; but it is easy to recognize in his writings
the recurrent, though intermittent, strain of unusual foreboding. Life
then held much for him; and it is when richest that the possibility of
approaching loss possesses the consciousness with the sense of
probability. Upon a soul of his heroic temper, however, such
presentiments, though they might solemnize and consecrate the passing
moments, had no power to appall, nor to convert cheerfulness into
gloom. The light that led him never burned more brightly, nor did he
ever follow with more unfaltering step.

Fixed in his mind to return to his command in October, he soon felt
that, in the uncertainties of the French movements, a call might come
at any moment. Although he nowhere says so, his mind was doubtless
made up that, if Villeneuve's twenty-nine sail went to, or near, the
Mediterranean, he would go out at once. "Every ship," he writes on the
31st of August, "even the Victory, is ordered out, for there is an
entire ignorance whether the Ferrol fleet is coming to the northward,
gone to the Mediterranean, or cruizing for our valuable homeward-bound
fleet." "Mr. Pitt," he tells a friend as early as the 29th, "is
pleased to think that my services may be wanted. I hope Calder's
victory (which I am most anxiously expecting) will render my going
forth unnecessary." "I hold myself ready," he writes again on the 3d
of September, "to go forth whenever I am desired, although God knows
I want rest; but self is entirely out of the question."[115]

It was not, therefore, to a mind or will unprepared that the sudden
intimation came on the 2d of September--just a fortnight after he left
the "Victory." That morning there arrived in town Captain Blackwood of
the frigate "Euryalus," which had been despatched by Collingwood to
notify the Admiralty that the missing Villeneuve had turned up with
his squadron at Cadiz, on the 20th of August. Blackwood was an old
friend and follower. It was he who had commanded the "Penelope" in
March, 1800, and more than any one present had insured the capture of
the "Guillaume Tell," when she ran out from Malta,[116]--the greatest
service, probably, rendered to Nelson's reputation by any man who ever
sailed under his orders. He stopped first at Merton at five o'clock in
the morning, and found Nelson already up and dressed. The latter said
at once, "I am sure you bring me news of the French and Spanish
fleets, and I think I shall yet have to beat them." Later in the day
he called at the Admiralty, and there saw Blackwood again. In the
course of conversation, which turned chiefly upon future operations in
the Mediterranean, he frequently repeated, "Depend on it, Blackwood, I
shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing," an expression whose wording
evinces animation and resolve,--far removed from the troubled
indecision from which, by her own account, Lady Hamilton freed him.

It was speedily determined by the Government that the combined fleets
in Cadiz should be held there, or forced to fight if they left; the
country had passed through a fortnight of too great anxiety, to risk
any chance of its repetition by a renewed evasion. Ignorant of the
reasons which dictated Villeneuve's course, and that it was not
accordant but contrary to his orders, it was natural to suppose that
there was some further object indicated by the position now taken, and
that that object was the Mediterranean. Moreover, so large a body of
commissioned ships--nearly forty--as were now assembled, could not
fail to tax severely the resources of a port like Cadiz, and distress
would tend to drive them out soon. Thirty thousand able-bodied men are
a heavy additional load on the markets of a small city, blockaded by
sea, and with primitive communications by land. Upon this rested
Nelson's principal hope of obliging them to come forth, if Napoleon
himself did not compel them. Their position, he wrote the Secretary
for War soon after he joined the fleet, seemed to favor an attack by
rockets; "but I think we have a better chance of forcing them out by
want of provisions: it is said hunger will break through stone
walls,--ours is only a wall of wood." "It is said that there is a
great scarcity of provisions in Cadiz." He then mentioned that the
allies were endeavoring to meet this difficulty by sending neutral
vessels, loaded with food-stuffs, from French ports to all the small
harbors on either side of Cadiz, whence the stores carried by them
could be transferred by coasting-boats,--a process which ships were
powerless to stop. Collingwood, therefore, had seized the neutrals,
and sent them into Gibraltar, a step which Nelson had approved and
continued. For it he then demanded the authority of his government.
"Should it be thought proper to allow the enemy's fleet to be
victualled, I request that I may be informed as soon as possible."

In connection with this subject Nelson made an allusion to a policy
with which Castlereagh, the minister he was addressing, was afterwards
identified,--that of the celebrated Orders in Council of 1807, and the
license system connected with it. This is one of the few intimations
we have of the wide range of subjects upon which he conversed with
members of the Cabinet while in England; and it is interesting, not
only as showing how far back those measures originated, but also as
illustrating his own prophetic intuition of the construction which
would be placed upon such proceedings. "I can have nothing, as an
Admiral, to say upon the propriety of granting licences; but from what
your Lordship told me of the intention of Ministers respecting the
neutral trade, it strikes me, some day it may be urged that it was not
for the sake of blockade, but for the purpose of taking all the trade
into her own hands, that Great Britain excluded the Neutrals. Your
Lordship's wisdom will readily conceive all that Neutral Courts may
urge at this apparent injustice, and of might overcoming right."[117]
This shrewdly accurate forecast of a contention which was not to arise
till after his death is but one instance among many of Nelson's
clearness of judgment, in political as well as in military matters.

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