Chapter 9

Nelson had a weary, anxious time on the Toulon station. He called it his home, and said they were in fine fighting trim and wished to God the ships were the same, but they were in a very dilapidated condition, not fit to stand the bad weather they were sure to encounter. The British Minister at Naples wished to send a Frenchman who could be relied on with information as to the whereabouts of the French fleet. Nelson replied that he would not on any account have a Frenchman in the British fleet except as a prisoner. He would be grateful to him for any information he could give, but not a Frenchman would be allowed to come to him, and adds that "his mother hated the French." He was enraged at the report spread by a fussy French Admiral named M. la Touche-Treville, who was in command at Toulon. It was said that he was sent to beat Nelson as he had done at Boulogne. But he was shy about coming out and trying a tussle. Nelson said he was a miscreant, a poltroon, and a liar. The Frenchman had boasted in a publication that he had put the British fleet to flight. The British Admiral took the charge so seriously to heart that he sent a copy of the _Victory's_ log to the Admiralty to disprove the statement of the lying Admiral la Touche, and in a letter to his brother Nelson says, "You will have seen La Touche's letter of how he chased me, and how I ran. I keep it; and by God if I take him, he shall eat it." La Touche cheated Nelson of a sweet revenge by dying like a good Christian before the outraged British Admiral could get hold of him. The newspapers of France said he died of fatigue caused by walking so often to the signal post at Sepet, to watch the British fleet; and Nelson stated "that he was always sure that would be the death of him, and that if he had come out to fight him it would have added ten years on to his life." Poor Nelson was very sensitive when his professional qualities were assailed. He thought, and thought rightly, that the blockade at Toulon was an unparalleled feat of human patience and physical endurance. He had only been out of his ship three times from May 1803 to August 1805. We may write and speak about this wonderful devotion to duty, but it is only if we take time to think of the terrific things which the central figure who commanded, and the crews of the fleet of rickety, worn-out, leaky baskets--proudly spoken of as the "wooden walls of Old England"--had to contend with and actually did, that we comprehend the vast strain and task of it all. It was because Nelson was ever being reminded by some clumsy act of the Admiralty or thoughtless, ignorant criticism on the part of the politicians and civilian public generally that the work he and the men under him were doing was not appreciated as it should be, that he gave way to outbursts of violent resentment. But so far as the present writer has been able to discover, his love of approbation was so strong that an encouraging word of praise soon put him in love for the time being with those whom he had lately cursed.

He never shrank from disobeying the instructions of whatever authority was over him if his judgment led him to the conclusion that he would serve his country better by disobedience and by following his own judgment; whenever he was driven to do this he was right and those above him were wrong, and in each case he was so conclusively right that no authoritative power dare court-martial him, or even censure his conduct, since the public believed more in him than in them. When the spirit of well-balanced defiance was upon him, he seemed to say to the public, to himself, and to those who were responsible for his instructions, "Do you imagine yourselves more capable of judging the circumstances, and the immeasurable difficulties surrounding them, than I am, whose business it has been to watch minutely every changing phase? Or do you think my love of country or glory so incomparably inferior to yours that I would risk any harm coming to it, or to myself and the men under me, if I was not sure of my ground? For what other reason do you think I disobeyed orders? Do you suppose I did it in order that some disaster should be the result? Or do you still think that your plan, right or wrong, should have been carried out, even though it would be accompanied with appalling consequences to life and property? If these are your views, I wish to remind you that I am the Indomitable Nelson, who will stand no damned nonsense from you or from the enemy when I see that my country, or the interests that I represent, are going to be jeopardized by your self-assertive instructions, and I wish to intimate to you that there is only one way of dealing with a Frenchman, and that is to knock him down when he is an enemy. You have obviously got to learn that to be civil to a Frenchman is to be laughed at, and this I shall never submit to." The Admiralty censured Nelson for disobeying Lord Keith's orders and, as they claimed, endangering Minorca, and also for landing seamen for the siege of Capua, and told him "not to employ the seamen in any such way in future." The Admiralty were too hasty in chastising him. He claimed that his success in freeing the whole kingdom of Naples from the French was almost wholly due to the employment of British sailors, whose valour carried the day.

Nelson sent the First Lord a slap between the eyes in his best sarcastic form. He said briefly, "I cannot enter into all the detail in explanation of my motives which led me to take the action I did, as I have only a left hand, but I may inform you that my object is to drive the French to the devil, and restore peace and happiness to mankind"; and he continues, "I feel I am fitter to do the action than to describe it." And then he curtly and in so many words says to his Chief, "Don't you be troubled about Minorca. I have secured the main thing against your wish and that of Lord Keith, and you may be assured that I shall see that no harm comes to the Islands, which seems to be a cause of unnecessary anxiety to you." Incidentally, the expulsion of the French from Naples and seating Ferdinand on the throne was, as I have previously stated, not an unqualified success, nor was he accurate in his statement that he had restored happiness to millions. The success was a mere shadow. He had emancipated a set of villains. Troubridge says they were all thieves and vagabonds, robbing their unfortunate countrymen, selling confiscated property for nothing, cheating the King and Treasury by pocketing everything that their sticky fingers touched, and that their villainies were so deeply rooted that if some steps were not taken to dig them out, the Government could not hold together. Out of twenty millions of ducats collected as revenue, only thirteen millions reached the Treasury, and the King had to pay four ducats instead of one. Troubridge again intimates to his superior that Ferdinand is surrounded with a nest of the most unscrupulous thieves that could be found in all Europe. "Such damned cowards and villains," he declared, "he had never seen or heard of before."

IX

The French did not mince matters when their opportunity came. They, too, regarded them as vermin, and treated them according to the unrestrained edicts of the Reign of Terror, organized and administered by their late compatriots Sardanapalus, Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and their literary colleague, the execrable Marat, who, by the way, was expeditiously dispatched by the gallant Charlotte Corday.[12]

This method of bestowing the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity was received by the Neapolitans with a frenzy from which there sprang a demoniac retaliation. Societies were formed to carry out the most atrocious crimes against the Neapolitan revolutionists, whom the Royalists hated more than they did the French. The fishermen and other miscreants came to a solemn conclusion that it was clearly their duty as a Christian people to combine, and each choose one whom they should privately guillotine when the opportunity offered. With the idea of paying a high compliment to Troubridge, who had so splendidly protected the Royalists, fought the French, and subdued the revolutionists, they made him the recipient of a decapitated head which had proudly sat on the shoulders of a revolutionist. This trophy was actually sent to him with his basket of breakfast grapes. In making the present the gallant fisherman conveyed his compliments to the Admiral, and reminded him that it was a token of his high appreciation of the Admiral's brilliant services to the Royalist cause.

The Court was infested with traitors who would first carry out their vengeance against their rebellious compatriots and then cunningly lay the blame on those under whose protection they were. One of their judges informed Troubridge that he must have a Bishop to excommunicate some of the traitor priests before he could have them executed, and the fine sailor, who was sick of the crafty devils and the task he had been allocated to carry out, replied, "For the love of God hang the damned rascals first, and then let the Bishop deal with them if he did not think hanging was a sufficient degradation." Nothing in the annals of history can surpass the effrontery of these intriguers, which throws a lurid light on the class of administrators who associated with the British nation and spilt the blood of the flower of our land in bolstering up a government that was a disgrace and put all human perfidy in the shade.

These allies of ours, who were joyously butchering and robbing each other, demanded a British warship to take the priests to Palermo, so that they might be degraded in a proper, Christian fashion and then brought to Naples for execution. Troubridge was audaciously requested to appoint a hangman (it may be he was asked to combine this with his other naval duties), and knowing the fine sense of noble dignity in the average sailor, we can easily imagine the flow of adjectives that accompanied the refusal, and how he would relate the outrage to which he had been subjected in quarterdeck language, that need not be here repeated, to his superior officer, Admiral Nelson, who must have felt the degradation of being selected to carry out as dirty a piece of work as ever devolved upon a public servant. To fight for his King and country was the joy of his soul, but to be selected as wet-nurse to the kingdom of Naples and the dignitaries that were at the head of it would have been an unbearable insult to his sense of proportion had it not been for the fulsome flattery, to which he was so susceptible, which was adroitly administered by the ladies of the Court, headed by the Queen and supplemented by the wife of Sir William Hamilton.

There is always some fatal weakness about a great man that lures him into littleness, and this was an overwhelming tragedy in Nelson's career. The approbation of men was gratefully received and even asked for, but the adoration of women reduced him to helplessness. He was drugged by it, and the stronger the doses, the more efficacious they were. They nullified the vision of the unwholesome task he was set to carry out until his whole being revolted against the indignity of it, when he would pour out his wrath to Lady Hamilton as he did at the time when Troubridge would report to him his own trials. No doubt this caused him to realize the chaotic condition of public affairs, for he writes to the lady that "politics are hateful to him, and that Ministers of Kings are the greatest scoundrels that ever lived." The King of Naples is, he suspects, to be superseded by a prince who has married a Russian Archduchess. This, presumably, had been arranged by the "great political scoundrels." He stands loyally by Ferdinand, but soon all the work of that part of his life that gave him socially so much pleasure and professionally so much misery is to be left for evermore, and his great talents used in other and higher spheres.

He had retaken Naples from the French, who had set up the Parthenopean Republic in 1799, and placed the tyrant King on his throne again; after a few more chequered years a treaty of neutrality was signed between France and Naples, which was treacherously broken by Naples. Ferdinand had to fly to Sicily, the French troops entered the capital, and Bonaparte, who had been marching from one victory to another, cleared out deep-rooted abuses and introduced reforms wherever he could. He had become the terror and the enemy of the misgoverning monarchs of that period, and the French nation had proclaimed him Emperor in 1804. He placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples in February 1806; Joseph ruled with marked moderation and distinction, sweeping away much of the foul canker of corruption and introducing many beneficent reforms during his two years of kingship. He then, much against his own wishes, became King of Spain, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Prince Joachim Murat, the dashing cavalry officer, whose decorative exterior awed friend and foe, and helped to win many a battle. His reign lasted from 1808 until 1815, and was no less distinguished than that of Joseph's. The fall of the Napoleonic régime was followed by the fall of Murat, and the despicable and treacherous Ferdinand became again the king, and brought back with him the same tyrannical habits that had made his previous rule so disastrous to the kingdom and to himself. No whitewasher, however brilliant and ingenious, can ever wipe out the fatal action of the British Government in embarking on so ill-conceived a policy as that of supporting the existence of a bloodsucking government, composed of a miscreant ruling class headed by an ignoble king, all living on the misery and blood of a semi-civilized population. It is a nauseous piece of history, with which, under sagacious administration, we should never have been connected.

The main idea was to humble the pride of France, that thenceforth there might be peace in Europe. The Neapolitan revolutionists believed that the French intention was to set up a free government and deliver them from an unbearable despotism. Quite naturally, the Court took an opposite view in believing that it foreshadowed deportation, so they lost no time in proclaiming it to be conquest and merciless plunder. Nelson urged the vacillating King to advance against the French, to trust in God's blessing being bestowed upon him, his army, and his cause, and to die like a hero, sword in hand, or lose his throne. The King, always dauntless in the absence of danger, replied that he would do this, trusting in God and Nelson. His Majesty, in tickling the Admiral's susceptible spot by associating his name with that of the Deity, doubtless made a good shot, and had Nelson's sense of humour been equal to his vanity, he might not have received the oily compliment with such delightful complacency.

We can imagine the scorn with which Troubridge would have received the potentate's reply had he given the same advice as Nelson. It is highly probable that had it been given on the quarterdeck of his ship, the King would have been treated to a vocabulary that would have impressed him with the necessity of scrambling quickly over the side. Nelson, it is stated, turned the French out of Naples, and they were subsequently overpowered by a plan put in force by Nelson and Troubridge, and carried into effect by men from the fleet. Captain Hallowell was ordered to proceed to Civita Vecchia and Castle St. Angelo to offer terms of capitulation. He reported the position to Troubridge, who ordered a squadron in command of Captain Louis to proceed and enforce the terms. The French, on the other hand, offered terms, but Troubridge, like Drake on another occasion, said that he had no time to parley, that they must agree to his terms or fight. The French Ambassador at Rome argued that the Roman territory belonged to the French by conquest, and the British commander adroitly replied "that it was his by reconquest." The inevitable alternative was impressive--capitulation. This was arranged, and the Roman States came under the control of the victors. Captain Louis proceeded in his cutter up the Tiber and planted the British colours at Rome, becoming its governor for a brief time. The naval men had carried out, by clever strategy and pluck, an enterprise which Sir James Erskine declined to undertake because of the insurmountable difficulties he persisted in seeing. General Mack was at the head of about 30,000 Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did not prevent them from being annihilated by 15,000 French, when General Championnet evacuated Rome. The King entered with all the swagger of an Oriental potentate. The Neapolitans followed the French to Castellana, and when the latter faced up to them they stampeded in disordered panic. Some were wounded, but few were killed, and the King, forgetting in his fright his pledged undertaking to go forth trusting in "God and Nelson," fled in advance of his valiant soldiers to the capital, where they all arrived in breathless confusion. General Mack had been introduced to Nelson by the King and Queen, the latter exhorting him to be on land what the Admiral had been on sea.

Nelson seems to have formed an adverse opinion of Mack, who was extolled by the Court as the military genius who was to deliver Europe from the thraldom of the French. He had expressed the view that the King and Queen's incomparable general "could not move without five carriages," and that _he_ "had formed his opinion" of him, which was tantamount to saying that Mack was both a coward and a traitor. Perhaps it was undue consideration for the feelings of Caroline, sister to the late Marie Antoinette, that caused him to restrain his boiling rage against this crew of reptiles, who had sold every cause that was entrusted to their protection.

Nelson was infatuated with the charms of Caroline, and as this astute lady knew how to handle him in the interests of the Neapolitan Court, he reciprocated her patronage by overlooking misdeeds that would, under different circumstances, have justified him in blowing swarms of her noble subjects out of existence. "I declare to God," he writes, "my whole study is how to best meet the approbation of the Queen." An open door and hearty reception was always awaiting their Majesties of Sicily on board Nelson's flagship when they found it necessary to fly from the wrath of their downtrodden subjects or the aggressive invasions of the French troops. The anxiety of Nelson in conveying them to their Sicilian retreat was doubly increased by the vast treasure they never neglected to take with them, and neither the sources from which it came nor the means of spending it gave trouble to their consciences. The British Government, always generous with other person's money, fed these insufferable royal personages by bleeding the life's blood out of the British public, though it is fair to say that the Government did not carry out to the full the benevolent suggestions Nelson consistently urged in their behalf. "His heart was always breaking" at some act of parsimony on the part of the Government in so tardily giving that which he pleaded was an urgent necessity for them to have. He frankly avowed that he would prefer to resign if any distinction were to be drawn between loyalty to his rightful sovereign and that of his Sicilian Majesty, who was the faithful ally of his King. The solemn audacity of this statement reveals a mind so far fallen to pieces by infatuation that it has lost the power of discrimination.

It will be remembered that this gracious ally promised Nelson that he would go forth at the head of his troops and conquer or die, and then scampered off in front of his army through Rome to Naples, and, after a few days' concealment from the mob, secretly bundled into boats with his retinue on a stormy night of great peril, embarked on the Admiral's ship, and sailed for Palermo.

Lady Hamilton is credited with planning (with heroic skill) means by which the Royal Family could be taken to the shore, where Nelson was to receive and convoy them in barges to the _Vanguard_. Lady Hamilton had explored a subterranean passage which led from the palace to the beach, and pronounced it a fairly safe and possible means of exit. The plan apparently succeeded, and the royal party, after a few days' precautionary stay in the Bay of Naples, were conveyed in safety to Palermo, notwithstanding the hurricane that was encountered and only weathered by a perfection of seamanship that was unequalled in our naval and merchant services at that period of our trying history. The voyage was not made without tragedy, for the youngest of the princes became ill, and as it is always inevitable to attach a heroine to circumstances that are sensational (when there is one at hand), their Majesties in their grief fixed on her who had braved the perils of investigating the possibilities of the subterranean tunnel which had proved a safe though hazardous passage for the conveyance of themselves and their vast treasure. Nor do they appear to have been unmindful of her devotion to themselves during the storm, which was the severest that Nelson said he had ever experienced--though this is a platitude, as sailors are always prone to regard the last storm as the most terrific of all! But that it was severe there can be no doubt. We may be assured that the royal parents were not in a condition to give succour to their stricken son, so he was vouchsafed to pass beyond the veil in the arms of Lady Hamilton, who had bravely defied the tempest and behaved with a compassion that must always stand to her credit.

They arrived at Palermo the day after the young Prince's death, and soon settled down to their gambling and other pleasures in which Nelson, as already stated, was involved. Troubridge, with touching fidelity, pleads with him to shun the temptations by which he is beset. "I dread, my Lord," he says, "all the feasting, etc., at Palermo. I am sure your health will be hurt. If so, all their saints will be damned by the Navy"; and then he goes on to say, "The King would be better employed digesting a good Government; everything gives way to their pleasures. The money spent at Palermo gives discontent here; fifty thousand people are unemployed, trade discouraged, manufactures at a stand. It is the interest of many here to keep the King away; they all dread reform."[13] Troubridge was wellnigh driven to distraction by the terrible straits he was put to at Naples. The people were faced with the ravages of famine. Already there were scenes of unspeakable misery. His appeals to the Sicilian Court to send immediate relief was ignored. Nelson, to whom he had appealed, was absorbed in his attentions to Lady Hamilton, and refused to see the vicious indifference of the Court, who were hemmed round with a set of knaves and vagabonds, if that be not too moderate a term to use of them. Troubridge beseeches him to come to the rescue in the following terms:--