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

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




Hood apparently gave him full satisfaction as regards his own view of
the situation. "I am happy," Nelson wrote, when acknowledging his
reply, "that my ideas of the situation I am in here so perfectly agree
with your Lordship's;" but he did not settle the matter by a decisive
order. His object, as he seems to have explained, was to bestow a
certain amount of prominence upon a young captain, Hunt, who had
recently lost his ship, and who, Hood thought, would be sooner
provided with another, if he appeared as in command at the guns.
Nelson acceded to this arrangement with his usual generosity. "Your
kind intention to Captain Hunt," he wrote, "I had the honour of
telling your Lordship, should be furthered by every means in my power;
and my regard for him, I assure you, is undiminished. He is a most
exceeding good young man, nor is any one more zealous for the service.
I don't complain of any one, but an idea has entered into the heads of
some under him, that his command was absolutely distinct from me; and
that I had no authority over him, except as a request." Unfortunately,
Hood, in his desire to serve Hunt, not only unduly but absurdly
minimized Nelson's relations to the whole affair. His despatch ran:
"Captain Nelson, of his Majesty's ship Agamemnon, who had the command
and directions of the seamen _in landing the guns, mortars and
stores_,[20] and Captain Hunt _who commanded at the batteries_,[20]
... have an equal claim to my gratitude." To limit Nelson's share in
the capture of Bastia to the purely subsidiary though important
function of landing the guns, was as unjust as it was unnecessary to
the interests of Hunt. The latter, being second in command ashore, and
afterwards sent home with the despatches, was sure to receive the
reward customarily bestowed upon such services.

The incident singularly and aptly illustrates the difference, which in
a military service cannot be too carefully kept in mind, between
individual expressions of opinion, which may be biassed, and
professional reputation, which, like public sentiment, usually
settles at last not far from the truth. Despite this curious inversion
of the facts by Lord Hood, there probably was no one among the naval
forces, nor among the soldiery, who did not thoroughly, if perchance
somewhat vaguely, appreciate that Nelson was the moving spirit of the
whole operation, even beyond Hood himself. As the Greek commanders
after Salamis were said to have voted the award of merit each to
himself first, but all to Themistocles second, so at Bastia, whatever
value individuals might place on their own services, all probably
would have agreed that Nelson came next.

The latter meantime was happily unconscious of the wrong done him, so
that nothing marred the pleasure with which he congratulated the
commander-in-chief, and received the latter's brief but hearty general
order of thanks, wherein Nelson's own name stood foremost, as was due
both to his seniority and to his exertions. When the despatch reached
him, he freely expressed his discontent in letters to friends; but
being, at the time of its reception, actively engaged in the siege of
Calvi, the exhilaration of that congenial employment for the moment
took the edge off the keenness of his resentment. "Lord Hood and
myself were never better friends--_nor, although his Letter does_,[21]
did he wish to put me where I never was--in the rear. Captain Hunt,
who lost his ship, he wanted to push forward for another,--a young man
who never was on a battery, or ever rendered any service during the
siege; if any person ever says he did, then I submit to the character
of a story-teller. Poor Serocold, who fell here,[22] was determined to
publish an advertisement, as he commanded a battery under my orders.
The whole operations of the siege were carried on through Lord Hood's
letters to me. I was the mover of it--I was the cause of its success.
Sir Gilbert Elliot will be my evidence, if any is required. I am not
a little vexed, but shall not quarrel." "I am well aware," he had
written to Mrs. Nelson a few days before, "my poor services will not
be noticed: I have no interest; but, however services may be received,
it is not right in an officer to slacken his zeal for his Country."

These noble words only voiced a feeling which in Nelson's heart had
all the strength of a principle; and this light of the single eye
stood him in good stead in the moments of bitterness which followed a
few months later, when a lull in the storm of fighting gave the sense
of neglect a chance to rankle. "My heart is full," he writes then to
his uncle Suckling, speaking not only of Bastia, but of the entire
course of operations in Corsica, "when I think of the treatment I have
received: every man who had any considerable share in the reduction
has got some place or other--I, only I, am without reward.... Nothing
but my anxious endeavour to serve my Country makes me bear up against
it; but I sometimes am ready to give all up." "Forgive this letter,"
he adds towards the end: "I have said a great deal too much of myself;
but indeed it is all too true." In similar strain he expressed himself
to his wife: "It is very true that I have ever served faithfully, and
ever has it been my fate to be neglected; but that shall not make me
inattentive to my duty. I have pride in doing my duty well, and a
self-approbation, which if it is not so lucrative, yet perhaps affords
more pleasing sensations." Thus the consciousness of duty done in the
past, and the clear recognition of what duty still demanded in the
present and future, stood him in full stead, when he failed to receive
at the hands of others the honor he felt to be his due, and which, he
never wearied in proclaiming, was in his eyes priceless, above all
other reward. "Corsica, in respect of prizes," he wrote to Mrs.
Nelson, "produces nothing but honour, far above the consideration of
wealth: not that I despise riches, quite the contrary, yet I would
not sacrifice a good name to obtain them. Had I attended less than I
have done to the service of my Country, I might have made some money
too: however, I trust my name will stand on record, when the
money-makers will be forgot,"--a hope to be abundantly fulfilled.

At the moment Bastia fell there arrived from England a new
commander-in-chief for the land forces, General Stuart, an officer of
distinguished ability and enterprise. Cheered by the hope of cordial
co-operation, Hood and Nelson resumed without delay their enthusiastic
efforts. Within a week, on the 30th of May, the latter wrote that the
"Agamemnon" was taking on board ammunition for the siege of Calvi, the
last remaining of the hostile strongholds. In the midst of the
preparations, at eleven P.M. of June 6, word was received that nine
French ships-of-the-line had come out of Toulon, and were believed to
be bound for Calvi, with reinforcements for the garrison. At seven the
next morning the squadron was under way; the "Agamemnon," which had
two hundred tons of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an
hour after her less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook.

Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, not only
by the rumor of the enemy's destination, but also by the military
necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of his fleet. Admiral
Hotham, who commanded the British division of seven ships in front of
Toulon, instead of waiting to verify the report brought to him of the
enemy's force,--which was actually the same, numerically, as his
own,--bore up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the
time, to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in
succors. Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of them at
the beginning was an evident mistake, for which, as for most mistakes,
a penalty had in the end to be paid; and in fact, if the relief of
Calvi was the object of the sortie, the place to fight was evidently
as far from there as possible. Off Toulon, even had Hotham been
beaten, his opponents would have been too roughly handled to carry out
their mission. As it was, this precipitate retirement lost the British
an opportunity for a combat that might have placed their control of
the sea beyond peradventure; and a few months later, Nelson, who at
first had viewed Hotham's action with the generous sympathy and
confident pride which always characterized his attitude towards his
brother officers, showed how clearly he was reading in the book of
experience the lessons that should afterwards stand himself in good
stead. "When 'Victory' is gone," he wrote, "we shall be thirteen sail
of the line [to the French fifteen], when the enemy will keep our new
Commanding Officer [Hotham] in hot water, who missed, unfortunately,
the opportunity of fighting them, last June." Ten years later, in his
celebrated chase of Villeneuve's fleet, he said to his captains: "If
we meet the enemy we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather
think twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I
should not fall on them immediately [he had but eleven]--_we won't
part_[23] without a battle;" and he expressed with the utmost decision
his clear appreciation that even a lost battle, if delivered at the
right point or at the right moment, would frustrate the ulterior
objects of the enemy, by crippling the force upon which they depended.
As will be seen in the sequel, Hotham, throughout his brief command as
Hood's successor, suffered the consequences of permitting so important
a fraction of the enemy's fleet to escape his grasp, when it was in
his power to close with it.

The British divisions met off the threatened port two days after
leaving Bastia, and two hours later a lookout frigate brought word
that the French fleet had been seen by her the evening before, to the
northward and westward, some forty miles off its own coast. Hood at
once made sail in pursuit, and in the afternoon of the 10th of June
caught sight of the enemy, but so close in with the shore that they
succeeded in towing their ships under the protection of the batteries
in Golfe Jouan, where, for lack of wind, he was unable to follow them
for some days, during which they had time to strengthen their position
beyond his powers of offence. Hotham's error was irreparable. The
"Agamemnon" was then sent back to Bastia, to resume the work of
transportation, which Nelson pushed with the untiring energy that
characterized all his movements. Arriving on the 12th, fifteen hundred
troops were embarked by eight the next morning, and at four in the
afternoon he sailed, having with him two smaller ships of war and
twenty-two transports. On the 15th he anchored at San Fiorenzo.

Here he met General Stuart. The latter was anxious to proceed at once
with the siege of Calvi, but asked Nelson whether he thought it proper
to take the shipping to that exposed position; alluding to the French
fleet that had left Toulon, and which Hood was then seeking. Nelson's
reply is interesting, as reflecting the judgment of a warrior at once
prudent and enterprising, concerning the influence of a hostile "fleet
in being" upon a contemplated detached operation. "I certainly thought
it right," he said, "placing the firmest reliance that we should be
perfectly safe under Lord Hood's protection, who would take care that
the French fleet at Gourjean[24] should not molest us." To Hood he
wrote a week later: "I believed ourselves safe under your Lordship's
wing." At this moment he thought the French to be nine
sail-of-the-line to the British thirteen,--no contemptible inferior
force. Yet that he recognized the possible danger from such a
detachment is also clear; for, writing two days earlier, under the
same belief as to the enemy's strength, and speaking of the expected
approach of an important convoy, he says: "I hope they will not
venture up till Lord Hood can get off Toulon, or wherever the French
fleet are got to." When a particular opinion has received the extreme
expression now given to that concerning the "fleet in being," and
apparently has undergone equally extreme misconception, it is
instructive to recur to the actual effect of such a force, upon the
practice of a man with whom moral effect was never in excess of the
facts of the case, whose imagination produced to him no paralyzing
picture of remote contingencies. Is it probable that, with the great
issues of 1690 at stake, Nelson, had he been in Tourville's place,
would have deemed the crossing of the Channel by French troops
impossible, because of Torrington's "fleet in being"?

Sailing again on June 16, the expedition arrived next day off Calvi.
Although it was now summer, the difficulties of the new undertaking
were, from the maritime point of view, very great. The town of Calvi,
which was walled and had a citadel, lies upon a promontory on the west
side of an open gulf of the same name, a semicircular recess, three
miles wide by two deep, on the northwest coast of Corsica. The western
point of its shore line is Cape Revellata; the eastern, Point Espano.
The port being fortified and garrisoned, it was not practicable to
take the shipping inside, nor to establish on the inner beach a safe
base for disembarking. The "Agamemnon" therefore anchored outside,
nearly two miles south of Cape Revellata, and a mile from shore, in
the excessive depth of fifty-three fathoms; the transports coming-to
off the cape, but farther to seaward. The water being so deep, and the
bottom rocky, the position was perilous for sailing-ships, for the
prevailing summer wind blows directly on the shore, which is steep-to
and affords no shelter. Abreast the "Agamemnon" was a small inlet,
Porto Agro, about three miles from Calvi by difficult approaches.
Here Nelson landed on the 18th with General Stuart; and, after
reconnoitring both the beach and the town, the two officers decided
that, though a very bad landing, it was the best available. On the
19th, at 7 A.M., the troops disembarked. That afternoon Nelson himself
went ashore to stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen. The
next day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to sea,
and no intercourse was had from the land with those which remained.
The "Agamemnon" did not return till the 24th. Lord Hood was by this
time in San Fiorenzo Bay, having abandoned the hope of attacking the
French fleet in Golfe Jouan. On the 27th he arrived off Calvi, and
thenceforth Nelson was in daily communication with him till the place
fell.

As the army in moderate, though not wholly adequate, force conducted
the siege of Calvi, under a general officer of vigorous character, the
part taken by Nelson and his seamen, though extremely important, and
indeed essential to the ultimate success, was necessarily subordinate.
It is well to notice that his journal, and correspondence with Lord
Hood, clearly recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi;
for it makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more
important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood's report had put him
unfairly in the background, he was not exaggerating his actual though
ill-defined position there. That Nelson loved to dwell in thought upon
his own achievements, that distinction in the eyes of his fellows was
dear to him, that he craved recognition, and was at times perhaps too
insistent in requiring it, is true enough; but there is no indication
that he ever coveted the laurels of others, or materially misconceived
his own share in particular events. Glory, sweet as it was to him,
lost its value, if unaccompanied by the consciousness of desert which
stamps it as honor. It is, therefore, not so much for personal
achievement as for revelation of character that this siege has
interest in his life.

Besides the defences of the town proper, Calvi was protected by a
series of outworks extending across the neck of land upon which it
lay. Of these the outermost was on the left, looking from the place.
It flanked the approaches to the others, and commanded the
communications with the interior. It was, by Nelson's estimate, about
twenty-two hundred yards from the town, and had first to be reduced.
By the 3d of July thirteen long guns, besides a number of mortars and
howitzers, had been dragged from the beach to the spot by the seamen,
who also assisted in placing them in position, and for the most part
worked them in battle, an artillerist from the army pointing. Nelson,
with Captain Hallowell, already an officer of mark and afterwards one
of distinction, took alternate day's duty at the batteries, a third
captain, Serocold, having fallen early in the siege. Fearing news
might reach his wife that a naval captain had been killed, without the
name being mentioned, he wrote to her of this sad event, adding
expressively: "I am very busy, yet own I am in all my glory; except
with you, I would not be anywhere but where I am, for the world." On
July 7th the first outwork fell. The attack upon the others was then
steadily and systematically prosecuted, until on the 19th all had been
captured, and the besiegers stood face to face with the town walls.

During this time Nelson, as always, was continually at the front and
among the most exposed. Out of six guns in the battery which he calls
"ours," five were disabled in six days. On the 12th at daylight, a
heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, "seldom missed our
battery;" and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared
his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye
with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and
cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, "I got a little hurt this
morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained
absent from duty only the regular twenty-four hours; but, after some
fluctuations of hope, the sight of the eye was permanently lost to
him. Of General Stuart's conduct in the operations he frequently
speaks with cordial admiration. "He is not sparing of himself on any
occasion, he every night sleeps with us in the advanced battery. If I
may be allowed to judge, he is an extraordinary good judge of ground.
No officer ever deserved success more." At the same time he expresses
dissatisfaction with some of the subordinate army officers, to whose
inefficiency he attributes the necessity for undue personal exertion
on the general's part: "The General is not well. He fatigues himself
too much, but I can't help seeing he is obliged to do it. He has not a
person to forward his views,--the engineer sick, the artillery captain
not fit for active service; therefore every minute thing must be done
by himself, or it is not done at all."

The work was tedious and exhausting, and the malaria of the hot
Corsican summer told heavily on men's health and patience. The supply
of ammunition, and of material of war generally, for the army seems to
have been inadequate; and heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not
only for guns, which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the
expenditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could be
renewed. The troops also were not numerous enough, under the climatic
conditions, to do all their own duty. In such circumstances, when two
parties are working together to the same end, but under no common
control, each is prone to think the other behindhand in his work and
exacting in his demands. "Why don't Lord Hood land 500 men to work?"
said Colonel Moore, the general's right-hand man. "Our soldiers are
tired." Nelson, on the other hand, thought that Moore wanted over-much
battering done to the breach of a work, before he led the stormers to
it; and Hood, who was receiving frequent reports of the preparations
of the French fleet in Toulon, was impatient to have the siege pushed,
and thought the army dilatory. "The rapidity with which the French are
getting on at Toulon," he wrote confidentially to Nelson, "makes it
indispensably necessary for me to put the whole of the fleet under my
command in the best possible state for service; and I must soon apply
to the general for those parts of the regiments now on shore, ordered
by his Majesty to serve in lieu of marines, to be held in readiness to
embark at the shortest notice. I shall delay this application as long
as possible."

Nelson, being a seaman, sympathized of course with his own service,
and with Hood, for whom he had most cordial admiration, both personal
and professional. But at the same time he was on the spot, a constant
eye-witness to the difficulties of the siege, a clear-headed observer,
with sound military instincts, and fair-minded when facts were before
him. The army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices
that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen. He repeats
the request for more seamen, and, although he seems to doubt the
reasonableness of the demand, evidently thinks that they should be
furnished, if possible. Hood accordingly sent an additional detachment
of three hundred, raising the number on shore to the five hundred
suggested by Moore. "I had much rather," he wrote, "that a hundred
seamen should be landed unnecessarily, than that one should be kept
back that was judged necessary." On the other hand, when the general,
after a work bearing on the bay had been destroyed, suggests that the
navy might help, by laying the ships against the walls, Nelson takes
"the liberty of observing that the business of laying wood before
walls was much altered of late," and adds the common-sense remark,
that "the quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on
such an attack could be much better directed from a battery on shore."
This conversation took place immediately after all the outworks had
been reduced. It was conducted "with the greatest politeness," he
writes, and "the General thanked me for my assistance, but it was
necessary to come to the point whether the siege should be persevered
in or given up. If the former, he must be supplied with the means,
which were more troops, more seamen to work, and more ammunition."
Nelson replied that, if the requisite means could not be had on the
spot, they could at least hold on where they were till supplied from
elsewhere.

It will be noticed that Nelson was practically the intermediary
between the two commanders-in-chief. In fact, there appears to have
been between them some constraint, and he was at times asked to
transmit a message which he thought had better go direct. In this
particularly delicate situation, one cannot but be impressed with the
tact he for the most part shows, the diplomatic ability, which was
freely attributed to him by his superiors in later and more
influential commands. This was greatly helped by his cordial good-will
towards others, combined with disinterested zeal for the duty before
him; the whole illumined by unusual sagacity and good sense. He sees
both sides, and conveys his suggestions to either with a
self-restraint and deference which avert resentment; and he preserves
both his calmness and candor, although he notices in the camp some
jealousy of his confidential communication with his immediate
superior, the admiral. Though never backward to demand what he thought
the rights of himself or his associates, Nelson was always naturally
disposed to reconcile differences, to minimize causes of trouble, and
this native temperament had not yet undergone the warping which
followed his later wounds--especially that on the head received at the
Nile--and the mental conflict into which he was plunged by his
unhappy passion for Lady Hamilton. At this time, in the flush of
earlier enthusiasm, delighting as few men do in the joy of battle, he
strove to promote harmony, to smooth over difficulties by every
exertion possible, either by doing whatever was asked of him, or by
judicious representations to others. Thus, when Hood, impatient at the
disturbing news from Toulon, wishes to hasten the conclusion by
summoning the garrison, in the hope that it may yield at once, the
general objected, apparently on the ground that the statement of their
own advantages, upon which such a summons might be based, would be
prejudicial, if, as was most probable, the demand was rejected.
Whatever his reason, Nelson, though indirectly, intimates to Hood that
in this matter he himself agrees, upon the whole, with the general,
and Hood yields the point,--the more so that he learns from Nelson
that the outposts are to be stormed the next night; and sorely was the
captain, in his judicious efforts thus to keep the peace, tried by the
postponement of the promised assault for twenty-four hours. "_Such
things are_," he wrote to Hood, using a favorite expression. "I hope
to God the general, who seems a good officer and an amiable man, is
not led away; but Colonel Moore is his great friend."

The feeling between the land and sea services was emphasized in the
relations existing between Lord Hood and Colonel Moore, who
afterwards, as Sir John Moore, fell gloriously at Corunna. To these
two eminent officers fortune denied the occasion to make full proof of
their greatness to the world; but they stand in the first rank of
those men of promise whose failure has been due, not to their own
shortcomings, but to the lack of opportunity. Sir John Moore has been
the happier, in that the enterprise with which his name is chiefly
connected, and upon which his title to fame securely rests, was
completed, and wrought its full results; fortunate, too, in having
received the vindication of that great action at the hands of the
most eloquent of military historians. His country and his profession
may well mourn a career of such fair opening so soon cut short. But
daring and original in the highest degree as was the march from
Salamanca to Sahagun, it did not exceed, either in originality or in
daring, the purposes nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no
opportunity so to execute as to attract attention. Condemned to
subordinate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his
genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated plans
at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouan in 1794, in the former of
which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to realize his
well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, the issues of a
campaign.

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