Nelson: The Essential Hero (15 page)

On arrival at Cagliari to join Commodore Linzee and to present him with Hood’s sealed orders the crew of the
Agamemnon
were busy ‘all night fishing our masts and yards and stopping shot holes, mending sails and splicing rigging’. Although they had just been in action there was no time for rest, for the orders revealed that the squadron was to sail immediately to Tunis, to expostulate with the Bey on his pro-French policy. (The five ships with which Nelson had been in action had, in fact, just left Tunis.) William Hoste ended his letter home with the account of this action with the words: ‘Captain Nelson is acknowledged one of the first characters in the Service, and is universally beloved by his men and officers.’ The letter would only be seen by his father. It was not designed for posterity, and there was no censorship in those days.

The Bey of Tunis like the Dey of Algiers occupied a position first held by those famous Turkish sailors-of-fortune, the Barbarossa brothers, who early in the sixteenth century had established all along the North African coast a series of kingdoms and principalities dedicated to harassing the trade of Europe. These rulers of the North African coast lived by plunder and pillage, and by blackmail - extorting, from those powers who were willing to pay, vast sums of money to permit their ships to pass unmolested through the Mediterranean. At the moment the Bey was favouring the cause of France, as was proved by a large French convoy escorted by a frigate and a ship-of-the-line lying in the Bay of Tunis. Linzee’s orders were to try and convince the Bey that he should not support a revolutionary regime and be on terms of friendship with people who had murdered their King and Queen. To this latter, the Bey smoothly replied that it was of course quite wrong for people to have done such a thing, but he believed that in the history of the country which his visitors represented it was reported that the English themselves had once beheaded their sovereign. Nelson, who in company with the other captains had accompanied Commodore Linzee at the interview, was thoroughly dissatisfied with the outcome. ‘The English seldom get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which we have been; and I don’t like it. Had we taken, which in my opinion we ought to have done, the men-of-war and convoy, worth at least £300,000, how much better we could have negotiated : - given the Bey £50,000, he would have been glad to have put up with the insult offered to his dignity.’ Linzee, however, had no instructions from Lord Hood to do anything other than negotiate. He did not have Nelson’s impetuous spirit which, had it been given rein, would very likely have achieved success. It is fair to say, though, that it might have left a hostile Tunis to the south, while all British ships available were engaged in the north. Nelson, in any case, was glad to be gone: ‘Thank God! Lord Hood, whom Linzee sent to, for orders how to act after having negotiated, has ordered me from under his command. . . .’ He was put in charge of a squadron of frigates off Corsica, ordered to protect British trade and that of her allies, and to prevent any vessels getting into the port of Genoa. The command was a high compliment from Hood, for there were five captains in the fleet senior to Nelson.

It was with relief that the
Agamemnon
's captain put the sultry Bay of Tunis behind him. He knew already that action and not negotiation was his forte, and an independent command gave him the chance to use his initiative. He was disappointed to find that the French ships he sought - the same with which he had been in action off Sardinia -were tucked away in San Fiorenza and Bastia, while the badly damaged
Melpomene
was lying in Calvi.
Agamemnon
herself was in need of a refit, and, as he wrote to Captain Locker, ‘we have only had our anchor down thirty-four times since we sailed from the Nore, and then only to get water and provisions’. The time at sea put in by men-of-war at this period of history has never been equalled, even by the Americans in the Pacific, or the British in the Atlantic, during the Second World War. And these men had no diversions; poor food that got poorer the longer they stayed at sea; and the only opportunity to communicate with their homes was when a frigate went off with orders, or a ship was detached from the fleet for Gibraltar or England. They knew the face of the sea as no modern sailor can know it: not even single-handed yachtsmen who, despite their self-enforced loneliness, can still communicate by radio. On the other hand, the sailing ship had her own life and, although for some it must have been miserable, for the great majority it had its own dignity and simple pleasures. Under these conditions of many months at sea, it was the captain who could make or break a ship, for his influence was all-pervasive. As the old navy saying has it: ‘If the captain wakes up with a headache he takes it out on the First Lieutenant. And so it goes on right down the ship, until the youngest ordinary seaman kicks the ship’s cat over the stern.’ Meanwhile at Toulon it had become clear that everything hinged on the Fort of L’Eguilette which dominated the harbour. Bonaparte on taking command of the artillery had said, pointing to it: ‘Toulon is there!’ His judgement was soon to be proved right. While Nelson was at sea, protecting merchantmen and searching in vain for the French frigates, the French army investing Toulon, skilfully aided by the relentless deployment of his artillery by Major Bonaparte, was on the verge of making the harbour untenable. The
Agamemnon
had put into Leghorn and was busily engaged in provisioning ship when the news reached Nelson that Toulon had fallen. Shortly afterwards the ships full of refugees, of wounded, and of exhausted soldiers began to arrive in the port. Nelson outlined to various correspondents those only too familiar, dismal and confusing scenes that accompany evacuations: ‘One family of a wife and five children are just arrived, the husband shot himself ... the recital of their miseries is too afflicting to dwell upon. In this scene of horror Lord Hood was obliged to order the French fleet of twenty sail-of-the-line, and as many other ships of war, together with the arsenal and powder magazines, to be set on fire : report says that one half the miserable place is in ashes.’ The forces of the Revolution that swept Toulon did not spare their fellow countrymen, for no war is more horrible than a civil war. Nelson was never to forget the stories that he heard in Leghorn and later from brother officers who had been present at the fall of Toulon. Whereas Napoleon in subsequent years was to regale listeners with his feelings of triumph as city, harbour and ships went up in flames and the red tide ran through the streets, Nelson was only to recall the misery of it all, and to pin the blame where it lay - on revolutionary France. ‘In short, all is horror. I cannot write all: my mind is deeply impressed with grief. Each teller makes the scene more horrible.’

Corsica, as Lord Hood had foreseen, now became even more important. The possibility of gaining the island from the French was reinforced by the fact that General Paoli, a Corsican patriot who was a friend of James Boswell, had ambitions to secede from France and unite the island with the British crown. Hood was very sensible of this, and far more perspicacious than fire-eating Captain Nelson (who had already quite wrongly supposed that the ‘sea war is over in these seas’). But it was this able subordinate whom Hood now ordered to conduct a series of commando-like raids upon the island. This was something which, as history has proved over and over again, can be achieved by superiority of sea-power. In the war between the Elephant and the Whale, which was to follow over the next eleven years, the advantages enjoyed by each side are immediately obvious : the land-power having its great mass for central organisation and dominance, while the sea-power is, within limits, free to strike at its opponent from whatever quarter it chooses. The disadvantages to those who espoused a sea-power as ally had already been felt by the unfortunate citizens of Toulon (as they were to be felt by the French during the Second World War when they were abandoned to the Germans while the British withdrew their forces from Dunkirk). It was something which, only too naturally, gave the Continental nations pause for thought whenever it came to deciding on the respective merits of alliance with Britain or with France.

While Lord Hood moved the main body of his fleet to the Bay of Hyeres, a few miles east of Toulon, Nelson was able to initiate the first of a number of raids upon Corsica intended to turn the island into the main British base in the Mediterranean. The weather off the northern coast of Corsica can be unpredictable or dangerous, even in the more settled times of the year, but in January Nelson and the
Agamemnon
encountered everything that the uneasy stretch of sea can throw at the sailor. His letters to Fanny, to whom he remained as always a good and regular correspondent, tell something of those days: ‘I was unfortunately drove from my station with the whole squadron on the 28th by the hardest gale of wind almost ever remembered here. The
Agamemnon
did well but lost every sail in her. Lord Hood had joined me off Corsica the day before and would have landed the troops but the gale has dispersed them over the face of the waters. The
Victory
was very near lost. . . .’ However, in the same letter, which is dated 30 January 1794, at Leghorn, he goes on to report the first of those small successes which he was over-confident would give the British control of Corsica in ‘a week or two’.

A thing happened a few days past which gave me great satisfaction. The 21st January the French had their store house of flour near a water mill close to St Fiorenza. I seized a happy moment, landed 60 soldiers and seamen. In spite of opposition at landing the sailors threw all the flour into the sea, burned the mill the only one they have, and returned on board without the loss of a man. The French sent 1,000 men at least against them and gunboats etc, but as the French shot went over them they were just within reach of my guns. It has pleased the Lord [Hood], if this dreadful gale has not blown it out of his memory.

Nelson continued with more lightning raids on coastal shipping and defences, designed to draw attention away from San Fiorenza where Hood planned to land a force of 4,000 men. Twelve vessels loaded with wine were burnt, another four being taken as prizes. At L’Avisena, just north of Bastia, a fort was captured and its garrison forced to withdraw. Elsewhere a small castle was seized, Nelson leading the landing party and striking the hated French colours with his own hand. A courier boat was boarded and captured ‘in high style’, and everywhere Nelson's ‘Agamemnons’ inflicted a series of pinpricks which kept the defenders on their toes and convinced them that Bastia must be the first British objective. This was as Hood wanted for, although Bastia’s harbour must ultimately prove essential to his plans, he had his eye on San Fiorenza as the first base for the British and their fleet. In mid-February 1794, San Fiorenza fell to a British assault, the only real opposition being provided by the Tower of Martella which yielded after two days’ bombardment at close quarters. (Anglicised into ‘Martello’, this tower was later to give its name to the series of small round forts which were built along Britain's coasts as a defence against Napoleon’s projected invasion.) Nelson was now detached by Lord Hood to blockade Bastia. This was an important service, for upon its success largely depended whether the Army could take this strongly fortified town which Nelson described as ‘walled in with a Battery to the north and south of it, a Citadel in the middle, defended by thirty pieces of cannon and eight mortars, four stone redoubts on the nearest hills and three other posts above them’. The blockade was so successful that not a boat got through, and Nelson was confident that a determined assault would soon have the city and port in their grasp. His opinion was reinforced by an engagement on 23 February, during which
Agamemnon
and two frigates bombarded the city for nearly two hours. Two days later he noted in his journal: ‘Lord Hood with five sail is to leeward. Two Corsican boats came off to beg some ammunition, and to tell me that our troops were on the hills.’ So indeed they were, but, much to Hood’s irritation and Nelson’s fury, General Dundas in command of the army based on San Fiorenza was of the opinion that Bastia could not be taken without strong reinforcements, which he sent for from Gibraltar. Nelson, recalling no doubt his experiences all those years ago with the military on the abortive San Juan expedition in Nicaragua, deplored the refusal of soldiers to move without long preparation and intensive planning. ‘What would the immortal Wolfe have done?’ he cried. ‘A thousand men would to a certainty take Bastia. With 500 and the
Agamemnon
I would attempt it. . . .’ It was not to be, and when Dundas was succeeded by Brigadier-General D’Aubant the opinion of the new commander remained unchanged. Nelson, who had heard from sources ashore that his bombardment had so shaken morale that St Michel, the French Commissioner, had been obliged to hide himself from the townsfolk’s fury, and had only been able to restrain them from sending out a boat to treat for peace by threatening to blow up the Citadel, was convinced that the army was not only dilatory but in the wrong. By the middle of March, his ship having been at sea for three months, he described in a letter to Hood how not a man aboard slept dry (through lack of deck-caulking and harbour maintenance) and that they were without fuel for the galley, ‘wine, beef, pork, flour, and almost without water. The ship is so light she cannot hold her side to the wind.’ He added that, if they could be spared for a few days, he could get to Porto Ferraio and Leghorn, water and provision within twenty-four hours, and be back on station. He was absolutely determined to be in at the assault of Bastia. He knew the mettle of his crew to be ‘almost invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas.’

The spring came slowly to Corsica, the weather remained variable and often rough, with the ships compelled to leave their station and stand offshore for safety. But still, day in and day out, they kept up their relentless blockade - a foreshadowing of that blockade with which England would in due course surround the whole continent of Europe. Lord Hood, meanwhile, who disagreed with D’Aubant just as much as he had with Dundas, was as confident as Nelson that Bastia could be taken without the elaborate planning and reinforcements that the Army called for. In the end, he managed to procure a force of a little over a thousand troops and marines, while Nelson sent off to Naples for artillery and ammunition, which the Army had also refused to provide. On the night of 3 April, this small force under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Villettes and Captain Horatio Nelson landed unopposed, three miles to the north of Bastia. The military at San Fiorenza, who had been openly contemptuous of Nelson’s optimistic views about the feasibility of taking Bastia without waiting for reinforcements, had sarcastically nicknamed him ‘The Brigadier’. Who was this thirty-five-year-old naval captain, they argued, to be disputing with professionals like themselves, let alone with their general? Nelson was soon to prove that he was as deserving of his military title as his naval one.