Nelson: Britannia's God of War (30 page)

Nelson rightly considered an armistice to be revocable by either side, on the arrival of fresh forces. His arrival, or that of the French fleet, would put an end to the situation existing when the terms were agreed. He believed that the French should give up within two hours and be sent home, and that the rebels must surrender to the mercy of their lawful sovereign. On his arrival he signalled Foote to annul the truce, and when informed that a formal capitulation had been agreed, maintained his determination to secure the immediate surrender of the castles. Unlike Ruffo, he had full power to act in the King’s name, and was privy to his most recent thoughts. In addition, as the treaty had not been carried into effect, and the rebels were still in the castles, it could be annulled. On 25 June Ruffo refused to send Nelson’s ultimatum to St Elmo, to warn the rebels that they had no option but to surrender to the King’s mercy, or to assist the attack on St Elmo. However, he did admit that Nelson had the authority to overrule him. Nelson, knowing the views of the King, and the Queen, was well aware that Ruffo and Micheroux’s treaty would be unacceptable in Palermo. He immediately sent a fast ship back to Palermo for further Royal orders.

Finding himself in an awkward position, largely through Micheroux’s action and his own weakness, Ruffo now tried to slip out of his unauthorised treaty, warning the rebels that it would not be carried out and advising them to retreat inland. This, as he knew, was quite impossible. If caught outside the castles they would be massacred by the
lazzaroni
. By the end of the day Ruffo was coming round to Nelson’s position, accepting his offer to land marines. The following morning Nelson agreed to carry out the terms of Ruffo’s armistice, and the two rebel castles were evacuated. Knowing they could not escape by land, the rebels boarded small ships in the harbour in the hope of slipping away under cover of darkness. Some did escape. There is no contemporary evidence that Nelson ever told the rebels
anything other than that they must surrender to the King, and on three separate occasions he explicitly stated that the rebels surrendered unconditionally.
⁸⁴
They had no option: the castles would have fallen in a day or two, when the garrisons would have been slaughtered. The French troops in St Elmo were in an altogether different position. They were subject to the conventions of war, and were repatriated. The Queen reminded Nelson of the parallels with the Irish rebellion of 1798, when the small French contingent had been sent home but the Irish rebels left to the King’s none too tender mercy.
⁸⁵

On 27 June a solemn Te Deum was celebrated, and Ruffo thanked Nelson and Hamilton for rescuing him from an awkward position. But Nelson’s ‘truce’ with Ruffo ended early the following day when letters arrived from Palermo. The King, Queen and Prime Minister rejected all conditions and ordered Ruffo to abide by Nelson’s instructions. Nelson immediately seized the rebel ships, and took several prominent Jacobins into safe custody. Once again Ruffo refused to act, and attempted to hamper the arrest of the suspects. Nelson even considered arresting him, a step for which he had full authority, but agreed with Sir William that it would be best to avoid trouble and await the return of the King.
⁸⁶
Two days later Ruffo received royal orders to follow Nelson’s measures; despite ample evidence of his supreme authority Nelson wisely chose not to humiliate Ruffo, who already knew he had displeased his King and exceeded his mandate. In a typically magnanimous gesture, Nelson spoke up for the Cardinal, and invited him on board the
Foudroyant
.

Such consideration was not extended to one prominent rebel. Commodore Francesco Caracciolo had commanded the Parthenopean gunboats in battle. The King and Queen were well aware of his treason by mid-May, naming him among a handful deserving death, a ‘viper’ who knew so much of the coast that he would constitute a standing danger to the King and the state if he escaped.
⁸⁷
Nelson can have been in no doubt of royal opinion. Caracciolo tried to escape, but was captured on 25 June. Nelson knew of his arrest the following day, but Ruffo only handed him over to the admiral on the 29th. The timing coincided with Ruffo’s loss of power, allowing blame once more to be shifted onto the foreigners.

As the designated Neapolitan Commander in Chief, Nelson properly convened a court martial for the Neapolitan Commodore. The court assembled on board the
Foudroyant
because there were no large
Neapolitan warships present. The court in the great cabin remained open to all interested parties, including several British officers who knew enough Italian to follow the proceedings. A majority of the Neapolitan officers found the Commodore guilty of desertion and of firing on the Sicilian frigate
Minerva
, an action in which royal sailors were killed. These were charges he could not rebut, and both carried a sentence of death by hanging. Acting in the King’s name, and in accord with his legal obligations, Nelson ordered the sentence to be carried out that evening. Caracciolo asked for another trial, and when this was properly denied, that he be shot rather than hung. Such a mark of his rank was inappropriate to his crime, and he was hung at the yardarm of the
Minerva
at 5 o’clock that evening. As Commander in Chief of the Neapolitan Navy Nelson had carried out the King’s stated policy and applied the law to the case before him. He had no personal role in the trial, and as the Court made no recommendation for clemency he had no grounds for altering the sentence.

With the rebels safely under his control Nelson moved to restore order, placing Hood in command of Castel Nuovo, and preparing the way for the resumption of royal authority. To secure the city he sent the ever-reliable Troubridge ashore in command of seamen and marines, with Ball as his second.
⁸⁸
Acton wrote to thank him in the King’s name and by his order for saving his honour by proper measures from a capitulation with the rebels. He was equally obliged to Nelson for seizing the rebels in the ships, and making Ruffo see where his duty lay. As for Caracciolo he ‘had deservedly been a proper example for that capital’ as the King returned to restore his authority.
⁸⁹
The correspondence of the King’s chief minister demonstrates categorically that Nelson was acting on the instructions of the Bourbon regime, as their appointed agent. He was not acting on his own authority.

If the scenes of horror that had greeted the downfall of the republic had been positively diabolical, it should be recalled that they pre-dated Nelson’s arrival. Ruffo sought an armistice to protect the city from his own army, but order was only restored when the British took control ashore. As for the hapless, incompetent and misguided Jacobins, some 8,000 prominent and less prominent figures were arrested, largely those who acted for the republic in civil or military roles. Their fate was to be the central figures in a long-delayed public demonstration of royal power and restored authority. It was not a calm judicial process seeking the fine points of each case, more an opportunity to use the
deaths of the obviously guilty to teach a lesson. Less than a thousand were punished; only 105 were condemned to death, and six of them were reprieved. Some 222 were imprisoned for life and 322 for shorter terms; 288 were deported and 67 were exiled. Few of the living would pay the full tariff of their offences.
⁹⁰
While the execution of so many leading figures in literature and society was made into a parable of Bourbon vice, the final death toll was trifling when set alongside the human cost of setting up and supporting the Republic. The penalty for a failed rebellion, in time of war, as agents of the enemy was well understood. The posthumous lionisation of the rebels and their treacherous cause by writers with a variety of agendas has obscured the real issues of the Republic. It was the unwanted child of a French invasion, and perished once the bayonets that set it up were withdrawn. It perished of its own irrelevance, with a little help from Ruffo’s Calabrese and the Neapolitan
lazzaroni
.
Nelson made sure that the process ended with the proper submission of the rebels to the mercy of their lawful sovereign. Only in this way could the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies become a useful base for the British fleet, and a shared interest with the Court of Austria.

Ferdinand arrived on 10 July, tactfully taking passage on a Neapolitan warship. He arrived to find Caracciolo’s corpse afloat, but the incident passed off when a wit advised the superstitious monarch that the traitor had come to beg forgiveness for his crimes. Ferdinand so far relented as to permit the rebel commodore a Christian burial in the fishermen’s church. Unwilling to trust his person ashore Ferdinand held court on board the
Foudroyant
, while Troubridge forced the French in St Elmo to accept terms. The castle capitulated on 13 July, and Nelson immediately despatched Troubridge and Hallowell with a thousand marines and seamen to secure the key fortresses of Capua thirty miles inland, and at Gaeta a hundred miles to the north. This was an unusual employment for the high-quality personnel of the fleet, but there was no other source of disciplined and determined manpower with artillery skills.
⁹¹
Nelson saw no other way of clearing the kingdom of the French, to release his forces for the wider theatre. The arrival of orders from Keith, dated 27 June, to detach ships to protect Minorca was a problem, but Nelson had long believed that Naples was the bigger prize.
⁹²
In explaining his actions to Keith he paraphrased the Articles of War: ‘under God’s providence His Sicilian Majesty … depends upon this fleet.’
⁹³
The arrival of fresh orders from Keith,
dated 9 July, to take all or most of his fleet to Minorca did not shake his conviction that he had been right. Although well aware that he was in breach of naval discipline, he promised Spencer that once the French had been expelled he would detach eight or ten ships to Minorca. The presence of up to 120 seamen and marines from each ship inland was the reason given, but strategic judgement was the occasion. He also prepared a formal defence of his actions for the Admiralty.
⁹⁴

As the French fleet was already heading out of the Mediterranean, with Keith in pursuit, the only threat to Minorca came from the Spanish, who were unlikely to take the risk. Whatever their object the French ships were leaving the theatre, and Nelson was confident Keith would pursue them all the way back to Brest.
⁹⁵
His faith was misplaced: Keith bungled every stage of the pursuit, lacking the single-minded determination to close with the fleeing French.
⁹⁶
Nelson was left to direct the theatre. To cover Minorca he despatched Duckworth with three ships and left the details to his ‘well-known abilities and judgement’. Duckworth had begged that the Portuguese ships not be sent with him, lacking Nelson’s sure touch with such ineffectual allies.
⁹⁷
By the end of the month Capua and Gaeta had capitulated, and Naples had been secured largely by the efforts of the ships and men of the fleet. The flagship was back at Palermo in time for a grand festival to celebrate the anniversary of the Nile, and there she would have to stay as the coast of Italy was the main theatre, and no allied ships had put in an appearance.
⁹⁸
A squadron was detached to the Gulf of Genoa to support the main allied army on 2 August, and three days later the newly appointed Commodore Troubridge was sent to operate against Rome and Leghorn. But Malta was Nelson’s next object: to support Ball he despatched the flagship, complete with her marines, and authority to land them for ten days.
⁹⁹

Amid the tension of the restoration of the Bourbons, the new British Consul, Charles Lock, began a process that would confuse Nelson’s biographers and blacken his reputation for two centuries. Lock, a cousin by marriage of Irish rebel Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Whig leader Charles James Fox, and Lady Holland, the society hostess, had been given the minor post as a sop to his wife’s family, after failing to make anything of his previous opportunities. Hot-headed and self-important, he took offence at every slight, real or imagined, and rated his abilities far above those of his Minister, while blaming Emma for all his problems. He showed where his political sympathies lay by
appearing at court functions dressed in a fashion associated by Ferdinand and most of his subjects with the Jacobins. When the Hamiltons embarked with Nelson for the recovery of Naples he was left behind; disappointed in his hopes of acquiring a house and some furniture, he began a sustained attack on the three people who had done most to save the Kingdom. These letters, circulated by his family, contain the first significant attack on Nelson’s conduct in 1799. By13 July Lock was complaining about the dishonour cast on the British by breaking the articles agreed with the Jacobins, revealing both ignorance and partiality. His imputation that Lady Hamilton was a hardhearted monster directing affairs at the behest of the Queen dovetailed perfectly with the gossip of that faded
grande
dame
Lady Holland, who already loathed Emma.

To compound his folly, Lock approached Nelson on the quarterdeck of the
Foudroyant
on 23 July, seeking a contract to supply the fleet with fresh beef and other provisions. It was common for the Consul to hold such contracts, but with his fleet so widely scattered, Nelson was content to leave matters as they were, with the ship’s pursers conducting the business. Lock claimed to have seen evidence that one or more of the pursers was cheating. Not predisposed to favour Lock, who had already made a thorough nuisance of himself, Nelson demanded names and proof. When Lock tried to retract, Nelson summoned Hardy as a witness, and demanded that he repeat his complaint. Having been backed into a corner entirely of his own making, Lock became agitated. He seemed to be drunk, and it required the best efforts of the powerfully built flag captain to get him off the quarterdeck. The following morning Nelson set up an enquiry, and when the assembled captains and pursers found nothing amiss, the pursers demanded an apology from Lock, who had the bad grace to refuse, claiming that his conversation had been private.