Nelson: The Essential Hero (53 page)

Calder, who had been critical of Nelson’s famous indiscipline at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, showed that he did not possess that instinctive feeling for the moment of opportunity which is the hallmark of a great naval commander. It seemed to him that he had fought a satisfactory action under difficult circumstances and had driven the enemy away from the Biscayan approaches to the Channel. He did not feel that he had done anything but his best under the conditions obtaining at the time. Indeed, Nelson himself, writing to his old friend Thomas Fremantle on 16 August in acknowledgement of a letter and a large packet of newspapers, was surprised by their contents:

I was in truth 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 Fremantle, 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.

This was fair and generous, but the fact remained that Nelson had given men a new concept of victory. The old days, when a fleet engagement was considered satisfactory - even glorious - if the other side withdrew and prizes were taken, were over. Annihilation was now expected.

Villeneuve, having first put into Vigo, where he left three ships, had slipped round into Ferrol, the best and largest harbour in Spain. Calder, having lost touch with his opponent after the battle, had joined Cornwallis off Ushant. Nelson also joined Cornwallis on 14 August, adding ten ships to the fleet that secured the approaches to England. Cornwallis excused him the normal courtesy visit and allowed him to make his way on to Spithead in the
Victory,
taking with him also the
Superb,
which was badly in need of dockyard hands. On 19 August, Nelson’s flag was hauled down and he was free to go on a leave which had in fact been granted him nine months before. He had been away from home for two years and three months, and it may have seemed, on looking back, as if he had achieved nothing. The many months of waiting and watching had ended with Villeneuve’s escape; the chase across the Atlantic had proved fruitless; and the battle that should have been his had fallen to Calder. If he felt sympathy for the latter, he may well have expected to find that he was equally subject to criticism. This was far from the case, as is made clear by the words of Lord Minto: ‘I met Nelson, today, in a mob in Piccadilly, 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 general 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 poem.’ Lord Minto’s brother, Hugh Elliot, writing from Naples, summed up precisely what it was that everyone in England felt about him :

Either the distances between the different quarters of the globe are diminished, or you have extended the powers of human action. After an unremitting cruise of two long years in the stormy Gulf of Lions, to have proceeded without going into port to Alexandria, from Alexandria to the West Indies, from the West Indies back again to Gibraltar; to have kept your ships afloat, your rigging standing, and your crews in health and spirits - is an effort such as never was realised in former times, nor, I doubt, will ever again be repeated by any other admiral. You have protected us for two long years, and you have saved the West Indies.

On 20 August the moment for which he had longed all those many months in his cabin in the
Victory
took place. He saw Emma, Horatia and his home at Merton once more. The idyll was resumed, but this time on even happier terms, since Sir William’s death had removed the necessity for keeping Horatia concealed, and she now lived with her mother as an adopted daughter. She was four and a half, an intelligent child, able to write, and already being taught French and Italian. Nelson sat down to dine in the company of his child, the woman he loved (and whom he regarded as his wife), in the presence of his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband, ‘Mother Cadogan’, Emma’s mother, and, as he put it, ‘people that do care for us’. He had after all, and despite a permanent concern about money, achieved that conservative English ideal of happiness - to relax with family and friends in his own home, his mini-castle protected by the stream known as ‘the Nile’. ‘He looks remarkably well,’ wrote Lord Minto, ‘and full of spirits’, and of Emma he had finally had to concede that ‘She is a clever woman after all: the passion is as hot as ever.’ In these, his last days in England, Nelson found a secure happiness such as he had never known before in all his life.

Since Merton was only an hour’s journey from London it was natural that he should often visit the capital to see Lord Barham at the Admiralty, as well as other ministers and friends. The threat to the. country had in no way diminished, and Napoleon was eagerly awaiting his expected fleet which would clear the Channel for his invasion forces. Instructions had been sent to Villeneuve to ‘sweep all before you, come boldly down on the enemy; if you give us control [of the Channel] for three days, nay, even for twenty-four hours, your task will be done; all is ready, Europe waits breathless on this great event; I put my trust in your bravery and skill’. It was under these circumstances, when England was threatened as never before, that the two men who played so decisive a part in the history of those days met in London. The cool and patrician Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, was already a man whom those who served with him could respect and admire for his iron-clad qualities of prevision, sagacity and endurance. The writer and politician John Wilson Croker tells of the incident:

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 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 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 style 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 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.

Nelson
was
‘two quite different men’. The one that his wife Fanny knew (or had known) was much the same as the one that all the officers and men who served under him loved and respected. The other side of his nature, never strongly in evidence until after the Battle of the Nile, was a strange by-product of his desire for fame coupled with his passionate love for Emma Hamilton. Vanity had long been his weakness, but if Emma had not made so great a play upon this aspect of his character it is more than probable that it would have remained under control. It was, however, this curious duality that gave him his irresistible appeal to the great mass of people; seeing in him, as they did, not only an embodiment of all their hopes and aspirations, but a touching evidence of those weaknesses which each could recognise in himself. Wellington, as his life was to demonstrate, was a man whom people could admire and even reverence, but Nelson, as an officer who knew them both remarked, ‘was the man to love’.

His days at Merton were constantly interrupted by the demands of the time. ‘God knows I want rest,’ he wrote, ‘but self is entirely out of the question.’ Austria and Russia had now joined Britain in a coalition against France, and on 24 August, Napoleon, despairing of ever getting his admirals to execute his orders efficiently, had decided to march against Germany. On 2 September, Nelson learned from Captain Blackwood of the frigate
Euryalus
that Villeneuve had retired to Cadiz. Blackwood was an old friend who had been largely responsible, when in command of the
Penelope
, for the capture of the
Guillaume Tell
off Malta, and Nelson listened to his news with close attention. ‘I think I shall yet have to beat them,’ he said. It was clear that the concentration of the French and Spanish forces - over thirty ships-of-the-line - could only mean a major movement against England and her allies. It could be into the field of the Mediterranean, or it could be once again northward to the Channel, to cover Napoleon’s invasion fleet. One thing was clear, Cadiz itself could not maintain for very long the provisioning of so many ships and men. Nelson, from his long experience of blockading, knew well that ‘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’. Jenkins comments in his
History of the French Navy
: ‘Villeneuve had been having a difficult time in Cadiz. He was, in all, two thousand men short (seventeen hundred sick and three hundred deserters — but he had troops who could serve the guns): he had also great difficulty in supplying his fleet and in making good damages, for the arsenal of Cadiz had exhausted itself in fitting out the Spanish ships.

It was clear to the British Government that the combined fleets of France and Spain must be held within Cadiz. Pitt, who was once again Prime Minister (for so long Nelson’s favourite politician), had no hesitation in selecting him to lead the force which would undertake this task. Nelson had given great thought to the best way in which a major fleet engagement could be fought and, as he had put in a discussion at the Cabinet, achieve the total destruction of the enemy. The formal line of battle, under which actions had been fought in the eighteenth century, he had long ago decided was a thing of the past. At the Nile he had fallen upon the van of the enemy and at Copenhagen upon the rear, but both these actions had been against vessels at anchor.- What must now be fought was an engagement between great fleets at sea. He outlined his plans in a conversation he had with Captain Keats at Merton during these last days in England :

‘No day can be long enough to arrange a couple of fleets, and fight a decisive Battle, according to the old system. When
we
meet them, (for meet them we shall), I’ll tell you how I shall fight them. I shall form the Fleet into three Divisions in three Lines. One Division shall be composed of twelve or fourteen of the fastest two-decked Ships, which I shall always keep to windward, or in a situation of advantage; and I shall put them under an Officer, who, I am sure, will employ them in the manner I wish, if possible. I consider it will always be in my power to throw them into Battle in any part I may choose; but if circumstances prevent their being carried against the Enemy where I desire, I shall feel certain he will employ them effectually, and, perhaps, in a more advantageous manner than if he could have followed orders.’ He went on to say : ‘With the remaining part of the Fleet formed in two Lines, I shall go at them at once, if I can, about one-third of their Line from their leading Ship.’ He asked Keats what he thought of the plan, and the latter paused as he considered something so audacious and quite unlike any sea-battle before. Nelson swept on : ‘I’ll tell you what
I
think of it. I think it will surprise and confound the enemy. They won’t know what I am about. It will bring forward a pell-mell battle, and that is what I want.’

What was startling, and immediately clear to Keats, was that the ships in the van of the two spearhead columns would have to endure an almost intolerable weight of fire from the enemy in their conventional line-ahead formation. Nelson, it. seemed, was prepared to risk this. He would accept heavy casualties in the foremost ships so long as he could break the enemy line and bring on an action at close quarters, in which he felt confident that his officers and men would be more than a match for a combined French-Spanish fleet. He knew that the morale in some of their ships was low, he envisaged confusion of intentions between ships of different calibre and construction, and manned by officers and men of different nations. In this he was to be amply confirmed in his judgement. The only basic difference between the plan as he told it at Merton and the actuality of Trafalgar was that he did not have the fast squadron for which he had hoped.

Nelson had arrived at Merton on 20 August 1805, and on the night of 13 September he left for ever. ‘I am again broken hearted, Emma told Lady Bolton, ‘as our dear Nelson is immediately going. It seems as though I have had a fortnight’s dream, and am awoke to all the misery of this cruel separation. But what can I do? His powerful arm is of so much consequence to his country.’ Lord Minto records that on the day before he left Emma would neither eat nor drink but sat in a kind of swoon at the table. But suggestions that she tried to prevail on him not to go can be discounted : Emma knew her man as gentle, nervous Fanny had never done. One of his very last acts before taking leave of Emma was to go up to Horatia’s bedside where the child of their Mediterranean passion lay asleep. He prayed, kneeling beside her bed, that her life might be happy - a prayer that was to be granted. In his private diary for Friday night, 13th September, he made the entry: