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

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




Nelson's success at Copenhagen was secured by address, as it had been
won by force. But it had been thoroughly won. "We cannot deny it,"
wrote Niebuhr, "we are quite beaten. Our line of defence is destroyed.
We cannot do much injury to the enemy, as long as he contents himself
with bombarding the city, docks, and fleet. The worst is the Crown
Batteries can be held no longer." Two or three days later he says
again: "The truce has been prolonged. The remaining half of our
defences are useless, now that the right wing is broken,--a defect
over which I have meditated uselessly many a time since last summer."
The result was due to Nelson's sagacious and emphatic advice as to the
direction and manner of the attack, by which the strong points of the
Danish positions were completely and unexpectedly turned. This plan,
it is credibly stated, he had formed before leaving England, although
he was not formally consulted by Parker until the 23d of March.

Having regard to the general political conditions, and especially to
the great combination of the North at this time directed against Great
Britain, the victory of Copenhagen was second in importance to none
that Nelson ever gained; while in the severity of the resistance, and
in the attendant difficulties to be overcome, the battle itself was
the most critical of all in which he was engaged. So conspicuous were
the energy and sagacity shown by him, that most seamen will agree in
the opinion of Jurien de la Graviere: "They will always be in the eyes
of seamen his fairest title to glory. He alone was capable of
displaying such boldness and perseverance; he alone could confront the
immense difficulties of that enterprise and overcome them."
Notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding that the valor of the
squadron, as manifested in its losses, was never excelled, no medals
were ever issued for the battle, nor were any individual rewards
bestowed, except upon Nelson himself, who was advanced in the peerage
to be a Viscount, and upon his immediate second, Rear-Admiral Graves,
who was made a Knight of the Bath. The cause for this action--it was
not a case of oversight--has never been explained; nor did Nelson
consider the reasons for it, which the Prime Minister advanced to him
in a private interview, at all satisfactory. If it was because a
formal state of war did not exist between Great Britain and Denmark,
the obvious reply of those engaged would be that they had hazarded
their lives, and won an exceptionally hard-fought fight, in obedience
to the orders of their Government. If, on the other hand, the Ministry
felt the difficulty of making an invidious distinction between ships
engaged and those not engaged, as between Nelson's detachment and the
main body under Parker, it can only be said that that was shirking the
duty of a government to reward the deserving, for fear lest those who
had been less fortunate should cry out. The last administration had
not hesitated to draw a line at the Battle of the Nile, even though
the mishap of so great an officer as Troubridge left him on the wrong
side. St. Vincent, positive as he was, had shrunk from distinguishing
by name even Nelson at the battle which had won for himself his title.
This naturally suggests the speculation whether the joint presence of
St. Vincent and Troubridge at the Admiralty was not the cause of this
futility; but nothing can be affirmed.

"First secure the victory, then make the most of it," had been
avowedly Nelson's motto before the Nile. In the Battle of Copenhagen
he had followed much the same rule. After beating the force
immediately opposed to him, he obtained the safe removal of his
detachment from the critical position in which it lay, by the shrewd
use made of the advantage then in his hands. This achieved, and his
ships having rejoined the main body, after various mishaps from
grounding, under the enemy's guns, which emphasized over and over the
adroit presence of mind he had displayed, it next fell to him to make
the most of what the British had so far gained; having regard not
merely to Denmark and Copenhagen, but to the whole question of British
interests involved in the Coalition of the Baltic States. Parker
intrusted to him the direct management of the negotiations, just as he
had given him the immediate command of the fighting.

One circumstance, which completely changed the political complexion of
affairs, was as yet unknown to him. On the night of March 24th the
Czar Paul had been murdered, and with him fell the main motive force
and support of the Armed Neutrality. Ignorant of this fact, Nelson's
one object, the most to be made of the victory, was to get at the
detachment of the Russian fleet--twelve ships--lying in the harbor of
Revel, before the breaking up of the ice allowed it to join the main
body at Cronstadt. The difficulty in the way lay not in Nelson's
hesitation to act instantly, nor in the power of the British fleet to
do so; it lay in the conflicting views and purposes of other persons,
of the Crown Prince and of Parker, the representatives of Denmark and
of Great Britain. Parker was resolved, so Nelson has told us, not to
leave Denmark hostile in his rear, flanking his line of communications
if he proceeded up the Baltic; and Nelson admits, although with his
sagacious daring he would have disregarded, that the batteries which
commanded the shoal ground above Copenhagen might have seriously
interrupted the passage. He was ready to run risks again for the very
adequate object mentioned. On the other hand the Crown Prince, while
recognizing the exposure of Copenhagen, feared to yield even to the
menace of bombardment, lest he should incur the vengeance of the Czar.
It was to find a middle term between these opposing motives that
Nelson's diplomacy was exerted.

On the 3d of April he went ashore to visit the Crown Prince, by whom
he was received with all possible attention. "The populace," says
Stewart, "showed a mixture of admiration, curiosity, and displeasure.
A strong guard secured his safety, and appeared necessary to keep off
the mob, whose rage, although mixed with admiration at his thus
trusting himself amongst them, was naturally to be expected. It
perhaps savored of rashness in him thus early to risk himself among
them; but with him his Country's cause was paramount to all personal
considerations." Nelson himself did not note these threatening
indications. Fond of observation, with vanity easily touched, and
indifferent to danger, he heard only homage in the murmurs about him.
"The people received me as they always have done; and even the stairs
of the palace were crowded, huzzaing, and saying, 'God bless Lord
Nelson.'"

His interview with the Crown Prince was private, only Lindholm being
present. It ranged, according to his private letter to Addington, over
the whole subject of the existing differences with Great Britain, and
the respective interests of the two states. The most important points
to be noticed in this personal discussion, which was preliminary to
the actual negotiation, are, first, Nelson's statement of the cause
for the presence of the British fleet, and, second, the basis of
agreement he proposed. As regards the former, to a question of the
Prince he replied categorically: The fleet is here "to crush a most
formidable and unprovoked Coalition against Great Britain." For the
second, he said that the only foundation, upon which Sir Hyde Parker
could rest his justification for not proceeding to bombardment, would
be the total suspension of the treaties with Russia for a fixed time,
and the free use of Danish ports and supplies by the British fleet.
These two concessions, it will be observed, by neutralizing Denmark,
would remove the threat to British communications, and convert Denmark
into an advanced base of operations for the fleet. Nelson did not have
great hope of success in negotiating, for he observed that fear of
Russia, not desire for war, was controlling the Prince. Therefore, had
he been commander-in-chief, he would at all risks have pushed on to
Revel, and struck the coalition to the heart there. "I make no
scruple," he wrote to St. Vincent after he had procured the armistice,
"in saying that I would have been at Revel fourteen days ago. No man
but those on the spot can tell what I have gone through, and do
suffer. I wanted Sir Hyde to let me at least go and cruise off
Carlscrona, [where the Swedish fleet was,] to prevent the Revel ships
getting in. Think of me, my dear Lord, and if I have deserved well,
let me retire; if ill, for heaven's sake supersede me, for I cannot
exist in this state." Pegasus was indeed shackled.

The truce was continued from day to day, both sides preparing to renew
hostilities, while the negotiators sat. Discussing thus, sword in
hand, Nelson frankly told the other side that he wanted an armistice
for sixteen weeks, to give him time to act against the Russian fleet,
and then to return to Denmark. On the likely supposition that the
latter would not greatly grieve over a Russian disaster, this openness
was probably discreet. In the wrangling that preceded consent, one of
the Danes hinted, in French, at a renewal of hostilities. "Renew
hostilities!" said Nelson, who understood the language, but could not
speak it, "tell him that we are ready at this moment; ready to bombard
this very night." But, while he thus could use on occasion the
haughty language of one at whose back stood a victorious fleet of
twenty ships-of-the-line, "the best negotiators in Europe," to repeat
his own words, his general bearing was eminently conciliatory, as
became one who really longed for peace in the particular instance, and
was alive to the mingled horror and inutility of the next move open to
Great Britain, under Parker's policy,--the bombardment of Copenhagen.
"Whoever may be the respective Ministers who shall sign the peace,"
wrote to him Count Waltersdorff, who with Lindholm conducted the
Danish case and signed the armistice, "I shall always consider your
lordship as the Pacificator of the North, and I am sure that your
heart will be as much flattered by that title, as by any other which
your grateful Country has bestowed upon you."

Had Paul lived, the issue might have been doubtful, and in that case
England might well have rued the choice of a commander-in-chief whose
chief function was to hamstring her greatest seaman; but the Danes
received word of the murder, and on the 9th of April an agreement was
reached. There was to be a cessation of hostilities for fourteen
weeks, during which Denmark suspended her part in the Armed
Neutrality, and would leave her ships of war in the same state of
unpreparedness as they then were. The British fleet was at liberty to
get supplies in all Danish ports. In return, it was merely stipulated
that no attacks should be made on any part of the coast of Denmark
proper. Norway[35] and the Danish colonies were not included, nor was
Holstein. In a letter to Addington, Nelson pointed out that as a
military measure, which it was, the result was that the hands of
Denmark were tied, those of the fleet loosed, its communications
secured, its base of supplies advanced, and last, but far from least,
the timid counsels of its commander-in-chief disconcerted; no excuse
for not advancing being left. Besides, as he said, to extort these
concessions he had nothing in his hand but the threat of bombardment,
which done, "we had done our worst, and not much nearer being
friends." Sir Hyde would not have advanced.

As a military negotiation it is difficult to conceive one more
adroitly managed, more perfectly conducive to the ends in view, or, it
may be added, more clearly explained. The Government, with
extraordinary dulness, replied in that patronizing official tone of
superior wisdom, which is probably one of the most exasperating things
that can be encountered by a man of such insight and action as Nelson
had displayed. "Upon a consideration of all the circumstances, His
Majesty has thought fit to approve." "I am sorry," replied Nelson,
"that the Armistice is only approved under _all_ considerations. Now I
own myself of opinion that every part of the _all_ was to the
advantage of our King and Country." As First Lord of the Admiralty,
old St. Vincent had to transmit this qualified approval; but he wrote
afterwards to Nelson: "Your Lordship's whole conduct, from your first
appointment to this hour, is the subject of our constant admiration.
It does not become me to make comparisons: all agree there is but one
Nelson."

The armistice being signed and ratified, the fleet on the 12th of
April entered the Baltic; the heavy ships having to remove their guns,
in order to cross the "Grounds," between the islands of Amager and
Saltholm. Nelson was left behind in the "St. George," which, for some
reason, was not ready. "My commander-in-chief has left me," he wrote
to Lady Hamilton, "but if there is any work to do, I dare say they
will wait for me. _Nelson will be first_. Who can stop him?" "We have
reports," he says again, "that the Swedish fleet is above the
Shallows, distant five or six leagues. All our fellows are longing to
be at them, and so do I, as great a boy as any of them, for I consider
this as being at school, and going to England as going home for the
holidays, therefore I really long to finish my task." His confidence
in himself and in his fortune was growing apace at this time, as was
both natural and justifiable. "This day, twenty-two years," he writes
soon after, on the 11th of June, "I was made a Post-Captain by Sir
Peter Parker. If you meet him again, say that I shall drink his health
in a bumper, for I do not forget that I owe my present exalted rank to
his partiality, although I feel, if I had even been in an humbler
sphere, that Nelson would have been Nelson still." Although always
reverently thankful to the Almighty for a favorable issue to events,
there does not seem to have been in him any keen consciousness of
personal dependence, such as led Moltke to mark the text, "My strength
is made perfect in weakness."

While thus lying, about twenty-four miles from the main body, a report
came that the Swedish squadron had put to sea. Alarmed lest a battle
might take place in his absence, Nelson jumped into a boat alongside,
and started for a six hours' pull against wind and current to join the
fleet, in haste so great that he refused even to wait for a boat
cloak. "His anxiety lest the fleet should have sailed before he got on
board one of them," tells the officer who was with him, "is beyond all
conception. I will quote some expressions in his own words. It was
extremely cold, and I wished him to put on a great coat of mine which
was in the boat: 'No, I am not cold; my anxiety for my Country will
keep me warm. Do you not think the fleet has sailed?' 'I should
suppose not, my Lord.' 'If they are, we shall follow then to
Carlscrona in the boat, by G--d!'--I merely state this to show how his
thoughts must have been employed. The idea of going in a small boat,
rowing six oars, without a single morsel of anything to eat or drink,
the distance of about fifty leagues, must convince the world that
every other earthly consideration than that of serving his Country,
was totally banished from his thoughts." Such preoccupation with one
idea, and that idea so fine, brings back to us the old Nelson, who
has found himself again amid the storm and stress of danger and of
action, for which he was created.

About midnight he reached the "Elephant," where his flag was again
hoisted; but he did not escape unharmed from the exposure he had too
carelessly undergone. "Since April 15," he wrote several weeks
afterwards to Lady Hamilton, "I have been rapidly in a decline, but am
now, thank God, I firmly believe, past all danger. At that time I
rowed five hours in a bitter cold night. A cold struck me to the
heart. On the 27th I had one of my terrible spasms of heart-stroke,
which had near carried me off, and the severe disappointment of being
kept in a situation where there can be nothing to do before August,
almost killed me. From that time to the end of May I brought up what
every one thought was my lungs, and I was emaciated more than you can
conceive."

The fleet proceeded in a leisurely manner toward Carlscrona, Nelson
chafing and fretting, none the less for his illness, under the
indecision and dilatoriness that continued to characterize Parker's
movements. "My dear friend," he had written to Lady Hamilton, "we are
very lazy. We Mediterranean people are not used to it." "Lord St.
Vincent," he tells his brother, "will either take this late business
up with a very high hand, or he will depress it; but how they will
manage about Sir Hyde I cannot guess. I am afraid much will be said
about him in the public papers; but not a word shall be drawn from me,
for God knows they may make him Lord Copenhagen if they please, it
will not offend me." But now that Denmark has been quieted, he cannot
understand nor tolerate the delay in going to Revel, where the
appearance of the fleet would checkmate, not only Russia, but all the
allied squadrons; for it would occupy an interior and commanding
position between the detachments at Revel, Cronstadt, and Carlscrona,
in force superior to any one of them. "On the 19th of April," he
afterwards wrote bitterly to St. Vincent, "we had eighteen ships of
the line and a fair wind. Count Pahlen [the Russian Cabinet Minister]
came and resided at Revel, evidently to endeavour to prevent any
hostilities against the Russian fleet there, which was, I decidedly
say, at our mercy. Nothing, if it had been right to make the attack,
could have saved one ship of them in two hours after our entering the
bay; and to prevent their destruction, Sir Hyde Parker had a great
latitude for asking for various things for the suspension of his
orders." That is, Parker having the fleet at his mercy could have
exacted terms, just as Nelson himself had exacted them from Denmark
when Copenhagen was laid open; the advantage, indeed, was far greater,
as the destruction of an organized force is a greater military evil
than that of an unarmed town. This letter was written after Nelson had
been to Revel, and seen the conditions on which he based his opinion.

So far from taking this course,--which it may be said would have
conformed to instructions from his Government then on their way, and
issued after knowing Paul's death,--Parker appeared off Carlscrona on
April 20th. Two days afterwards he received a letter from the Russian
minister at Copenhagen, saying that the Emperor had ordered his fleet
to abstain from all hostilities. Parker apparently forgot that he was
first a naval officer, and only incidentally a diplomatist; for,
instead of exacting guarantees which would have insured the military
situation remaining unchanged until definite agreements had been
reached, he returned to Kioge Bay, near Copenhagen, but within the
Shallows, leaving the Revel squadron untrammelled, either by force or
pledge, free to go out when the ice allowed, and to join either the
Swedes or its own main body. Accordingly, it did come out a fortnight
later, went to Cronstadt, and so escaped the British fleet.

While on this cruise towards Carlscrona, Nelson became involved in a
pen-and-ink controversy about Commodore Fischer, who had commanded the
Danish line at the Battle of Copenhagen,--one of two or three rare
occasions which illustrate the vehemence and insolence that could be
aroused in him when his vanity was touched, or when he conceived his
reputation to be assailed. Fischer, in his official report of the
action, had comforted himself and his nation, as most beaten men do,
by dwelling upon--and unquestionably exaggerating--the significance of
certain incidents, either actual, or imagined by the Danes; for
instance, that towards the end of the battle, Nelson's own ship had
fired only single guns, and that two British ships had struck,--the
latter being an error, and the former readily accounted for by the
fact that the "Elephant" then had no enemy within easy range. What
particularly stung Nelson, however, seems to have been the assertion
that the British force was superior, and that his sending a flag of
truce indicated the injury done his squadron. Some of his friends had
thought, erroneously in the opinion of the author, that the flag was
an unjustifiable _ruse de guerre_, which made him specially sensitive
on this point.

His retort, addressed to his Danish friend, Lindholm, was written and
sent in such heat that it is somewhat incoherent in form, and more
full of abuse than of argument, besides involving him in
contradictions. That the British squadron was numerically superior in
guns seems certain; it would have been even culpable, having ships
enough, not to have employed them in any case, and especially when the
attacking force had to come into action amid dangerous shoals, and
against vessels already carefully placed and moored. In his official
report he had stated that the "Bellona" and "Russell" had grounded;
"but although not in the situation assigned them, yet so placed as to
be of great service." In the present dispute he claimed that they
should be left out of the reckoning, and he was at variance with the
Danish accounts as to the effect of Riou's frigates. But such errors,
he afterwards admitted to Lindholm, may creep into any official
report, and to measure credit merely by counting guns is wholly
illusory; for, as he confessed, with exaggerated humility, some months
later, "if any merit attaches itself to me, it was in combating the
dangers of the shallows in defiance of the pilots."

He chose, however, to consider that Fischer's letter had thrown
ridicule upon his character, and he resented it in terms as violent as
he afterwards used of the French admiral, Latouche Treville, who
asserted that he had retired before a superior force; as though
Nelson, by any flight of imagination, could have been suspected of
over-caution. Fischer had twice shifted his broad pendant--that is,
his own position--in the battle; therefore he was a coward. "In his
letter he states that, after he quitted the Dannebrog, she long
contested the battle. If so, more shame for him to quit so many brave
fellows. _Here_ was no manoeuvring: _it was_ downright fighting, and
it was his duty to have shown an example of firmness becoming the high
trust reposed in him." This was probably a just comment, but not a
fair implication of cowardice. "He went in such a hurry, if he went
before she struck, which but for his own declaration I can hardly
believe, that he forgot to take his broad pendant with him." This
Lindholm showed was a mistake. "He seems to exult that I sent on shore
a flag of truce. Men of his description, if they ever are victorious,
know not the feeling of humanity.... Mr. Fischer's carcase was safe,
and he regarded not the sacred call of humanity." This letter was sent
to Lindholm, to be communicated to the Crown Prince; for, had not
Fischer addressed the latter as an eye-witness, Nelson "would have
treated his official letter with the contempt it deserved." Lindholm
kept it from Fischer, made a temperate reply defending the latter, and
the subject there dropped.

On the 25th of April the fleet was at anchor in Kioge Bay, and there
remained until the 5th of May, when orders arrived relieving Parker,
and placing Nelson in chief command. The latter was utterly dismayed.
Side by side with the unquenchable zeal for glory and for his
Country's service had been running the equally unquenchable passion
for Lady Hamilton; and, with the noble impulses that bore him up in
battle, sickness, and exposure, had mingled soft dreams of flight from
the world, of days spent upon the sunny slopes of Sicily, on his
estate of Bronte, amid scenes closely resembling those associated with
his past delights, and with the life of the woman whom he loved. To
this he several times alludes in the almost daily letters which he
wrote her. But, whether to be realized there or in England, he panted
for the charms of home which he had never known. "I am fixed," he
tells her, "to live a country life, and to have many (I hope) years of
comfort, which God knows, I never yet had--only moments of
happiness,"--a pathetic admission of the price he had paid for the
glory which could not satisfy him, yet which, by the law of his being,
he could not cease to crave. "I wish for happiness to be my reward,
and not titles or money;" and happiness means being with her whom he
repeatedly calls Santa Emma, and his "guardian angel,"--a fond
imagining, the sincerity of which checks the ready smile, but elicits
no tenderness for a delusion too gross for sympathy.

Whatever sacrifices he might be ready to make for his country's
service, he was not willing to give up all he held dear when the real
occasion for his exceptional powers had passed away; and the
assurances that the service absolutely required his presence in the
Baltic made no impression upon him. He knew better. "Had the command
been given me in February," he said, "many lives would have been
saved, and we should have been in a very different situation; but the
wiseheads at home know everything." Now it means expense and
suffering, and nothing to do beyond the powers of an average officer.
"Any other man can as well look about him as Nelson." "Sir Thomas
Troubridge," he complains, after enumerating his grievances, "had the
nonsense to say, now I was a Commander-in-Chief I must be pleased.
Does he take me for a greater fool than I am?" It was indeed shaving
pretty close to insult to send out a man like Nelson as second, when
great work was in hand, and then, after he had done all his superior
had permitted, and there was nothing left to do, to tell him that he
was indispensable; but to be congratulated upon the fact by a Lord of
the Admiralty, which Troubridge then was, was rather too much. He
could not refuse to accept the command, but he demanded his relief in
terms which could not be disregarded. His health, he said, made him
unequal to the service. For three weeks he could not leave his cabin.
"The keen air of the North kills me." "I did not come to the Baltic
with the design of dying a natural death."

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