Chapter 27

NELSON

(1798-1805)

Nelson and Napoleon never met; and Wellington the soldier beat Napoleon ten years after Nelson was killed at Trafalgar. Yet it was Nelson's victories that made Napoleon's null and void, thus stopping the third attempt in modern times to win the overlordship of the world. As Drake stopped Philip of Spain by defeating the Armada, as Russell stopped Louis XIV by the battle of La Hogue, as Jellicoe in our own day stopped the Kaiser off the Jutland Bank, so Nelson stopped Napoleon by making British sea-power quite supreme. Century by century the four mightiest warlords of the land have carried all before them until their towering empires reached the sea. But there, where they were strangers, they all met the same Royal Navy, manned by sailors of the only race whose home has always been the sea, and, meeting it, they fell.

Able men all, and mighty warlords, the might of three was much more in their armies than in themselves. Cruel Philip was not a warrior of any kind. Ambitious Louis and the vainglorious Kaiser were only second-rate soldiers, who would never have won their own way to the highest command. But Napoleon was utterly different. He was as great a master of the art of war on land as Nelson was by sea; and that is one reason why Nelson, who caused his downfall, stands supreme. But there are other reasons too. Nelson, like Drake, fought three campaigns with marvellous skill; but he also fought more seamanlike foes. Like Russell, he completely destroyed the enemy fleet; but he never had Russell's advantage in numbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only give two more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made his captains "like a band of brothers," which made the bluejackets who carried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most precious relics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; secondly, the very different kind of "Nelson touch" he gave his fleet when handling it for battle, that last touch of perfection in forming it up, leading it on, striking hardest at the weakest spot, and then driving home the attack to the complete destruction of the enemy.

Nelson was not the first, but the fifth, great admiral to command fleets in the last French War (1793-1815). Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, Duncan, Nelson: that is the order in which the victors came. Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, and Duncan were all men who had fought in Pitt's Imperial War; and each was old enough to have been Nelson's father. Howe was the hero of the relief of Gibraltar in 1782, at the time that all the foreign navies in the world were winning American Independence by taking sides in a British civil war. Howe was also the hero of "the Glorious First of June" in 1794, when he defeated the French off the north-west coast of France.

But it was under Hood, not Howe, that Nelson learnt the way fleets should be used; and it was under St. Vincent that he first sprang into fame.

St. Vincent, with fifteen ships of the line (that is, big battleships) was sailing south to stop a Spanish fleet from coming north to join the French, when, on the 14th of February, 1797, the look-out reported "enemy in sight." St. Vincent was walking up and down the quarter-deck with his flag-captain, Hallowell, as the reports came in. "Ten ships of the line in sight." Then "fifteen," the same number that he had himself. Then "twenty" . . . "twenty-five" . . . and at last "twenty-seven." When this total of twenty-seven was reported, the officer reporting said, in a questioning way, "Pretty long odds, Sir?" But, quick as a flash, St. Vincent answered, "Enough of that, Sir! the die is cast; and if they are fifty I will go through them!" And he did. This victory, which broke up the plans the French and Spaniards had made against Britain, was thought so important that Jervis, as he then was called, was made Lord St. Vincent, taking his title from the place near which he won the battle, Cape St. Vincent, the south-west corner of Europe.

In October Admiral Duncan was made Lord Camperdown for destroying the Dutch fleet which was trying to help the French into Ireland. He caught it off Camperduin (on the coast of North Holland) and smashed it to pieces after a furious battle, in which the Dutch, with a smaller fleet, showed that they too were of the Viking breed. This victory stopped the danger from the north, just as St. Vincent's stopped it from the south. Both were fought in the only proper way to defend the British Empire on the sea when the enemy comes out, that is, by going to meet him in his own waters, instead of waiting to let him choose his own point of attack against the British coast.

Next year, 1798, Nelson was also made a peer for a glorious victory won on his own account. He had learnt from Lord Hood the first principle of all defence--that the real aim is not so much to stand on guard or even to win a victory as to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you. This chimed in with his own straight-forward genius; and he never forgot his old chief: "the best officer that England has to boast of." Hood had the misfortune never to have been in supreme command during a great battle. But, in Nelson's opinion, he stood above all other commanders-in-chief of his own time; and, as we look back on him now, we see that Nelson alone surpassed him.

Napoleon, like the Germans of today, hoped to make land-power beat sea-power in the East by stirring up rebellion against the British rule in India and making Egypt his bridge between Europe and Asia. With daring skill he crossed the Mediterranean and conquered Egypt. But his victory proved worse than useless; for Nelson followed the French fleet and utterly defeated it in the Bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile on the 1st of August, 1798. The battle was fought with the utmost firmness on both sides, each knowing that the fate of Egypt, of the East, and of Napoleon's army as well as of his fleet, hung trembling in the scales. The odds were twelve British battleships to thirteen French. The French sailors, as usual, were not such skilled hands as the British, partly because France had always been rather a country of landsmen than seamen, but chiefly because the French fleets were, as a rule, so closely blockaded that they could not use the open sea for training nearly so much as their British rivals did. Still, the French fleet, though at anchor (and so unable to change its position quickly to suit the changes of the fight) looked as if it could defy even Nelson himself. For it was drawn up across the bay with no spot left unguarded between it and the land at either end of the line; and it was so close in shore that its admirals never thought anybody would try to work his way inside.

But that is just what Nelson did. He sent some of his ships between the van of the French and the Aboukir shoal, where there was just room to scrape through with hardly an inch to spare; and so skilful was the British seamanship that this marvellous manoeuvre took the French completely by surprise. Then, having his own fleet under way, while the French was standing still, he doubled on their van (that is, he attacked it from both sides), held their centre, and left their rear alone. By this skilful move he crushed the van and then had the centre at his mercy. The French gunners stuck to their work with splendid courage, driving the _Bellerophon_ off as a mere battered hulk and keeping most of the rest at bay for some time. But the French flagship, Orient, which the _Bellerophon_ had boldly attacked, was now attacked by the _Swiftsure_ and _Alexander_; and the French admiral, Brueys, already wounded twice, was mortally hit by a cannon ball. He refused to be carried below, saying that "a French admiral should die on deck in a fight like this." His example encouraged the crew to redouble their efforts. But, just after he died, fire broke out on board the _Orient_ and quickly spread fore and aft, up the rigging, and right in toward the magazine. The desperate battle was now at its fiercest, raging all round this furious fire, which lit the blackness of that warm Egyptian night with devils' tongues of flame. The cannonade went on. But even the thunder of two thousand guns could not drown the roar of that seething fire, now eating into the very vitals of the ship, nearer and nearer to the magazine. Every near-by ship that could move now hauled clear as far as possible; while the rest closed portholes and hatchways, took their powder below, sent all hands to fire stations, and breathlessly waited for the end. Suddenly, as if the sea had opened to let Hell's lightning loose, the _Orient_ burst like a gigantic shell and crashed like Doomsday thunder. The nearest ships reeled under the terrific shock, which racked their hulls from stem to stern and set some leaking badly. Masts, boats, and twisted rigging flew blazing through the air, fell hissing on the watered decks, and set two British vessels and one French on fire. But the crews worked their very hardest, and they saved all three.

For a few awed minutes every gun was dumb. Then the _Franklin_, the French ship that had taken fire, began the fight again. But the _Defence_ and _Swiftsure_ brought down her masts, silenced nearly all her guns, and forced her to surrender. By midnight the first seven ships in that gallant French line had all been taken or sunk; every man who could be saved being brought on board the victorious British men-of-war and, of course, well treated there. The eighth Frenchman, the _Tonnant_, still kept up the fight, hoping to stop the British from getting at the five astern. Her heroic captain, Thouars, had, first, his right arm, then his left, and then his right leg, smashed by cannon balls. But, like Brueys, he would not leave the deck, and calmly gave his orders till he died.

Dawn found the _Tonnant_ still trying to stem the British advance against the French rear, and the French frigate _Justice_ actually making for the disabled British battleship, _Bellerophon_, which she wished to take. But the light of day soon showed the remaining French that all they could do for their own side now was to save as many ships as possible. So the rear then tried to escape. But one blew up; two ran ashore; and, of all the fleet that was to have made Napoleon's foothold sure, only four escaped, two from the line of battle and two from the frigates on the flank.

Nelson had won a victory which was quite perfect in reaching his great aim--the complete destruction of Napoleon's power in Egypt and the East. Napoleon himself escaped to France, after a campaign in Palestine followed by a retreat to Egypt. But his army was stranded as surely as if it had been a wrecked ship, high and dry. Three years after the Battle of the Nile the remnant of it was rounded up and made to surrender. Moreover, Malta, the central sea base of the whole Mediterranean, had meanwhile (1800) fallen into British hands, where, like Egypt, it remains to this day.

The same year (1801) that saw the French surrender in Egypt saw Nelson win his second victory, this time in the north. Napoleon (victorious, as usual, on land, and foiled, as usual, at sea) had tried to ruin British shipping by shutting it out of every port on the continent of Europe. This was his "Continental System." It hurt the Continent; for British ships carried most of the goods used in trade not only between Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, but also between the different ports on the European continent itself. Napoleon, however, had no choice but to use his own land-power, no matter what the cost might be, against British sea-power. He was encouraged to do this by finding allies in those countries which had formed the anti-British Armed Neutrality of the North twenty years before. Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Prussia, and the Hansa Towns of Germany, were all glad to hit British sea-power in the hope of getting its trade for themselves. So the new Alliance arranged that, as soon as the Baltic ports were clear of ice, the Russian, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian fleets would join the French and Spanish.

But Nelson was too quick for them. On the 1st of April he led a fleet along the channel opposite Copenhagen, which is the gateway of the Baltic. After dark, his trusty flag-captain, Hardy, took a small rowboat in as close as possible and tried the depths with a pole; for the boat was so close to the Danish fleet that the splash of the sounding lead on the end of a line would surely have been heard. By eleven o'clock Nelson had found out that he could range his own fleet close enough alongside the Danes. So he sat up all night planning his attack. At seven next morning he explained it to his captains, and at nine to the pilots and sailing-masters. Half an hour later the fleet began to move into place. Three big ships grounded in the narrow, shallow, and crooked channel. But the rest went on, closing up the dangerous gaps as best they could. Just, after ten the first gun was fired; but it was another hour and a half before the two fleets were at it, hard all. At one o'clock a Danish victory seemed quite as likely as a British one. Very few Danish gnus had been silenced, while two of the grounded British men-of-war were flying signals of distress, and the third was signalling to say she could do nothing. In the meantime the few British men-of-war that were trying to work into the channel from the other end under Sir Hyde Parker were being headed off by the wind so much that they could hardly do more than threaten their own end of the Danish line. Parker was the Commander-in-chief; though Nelson was making the attack.

It was at this time of doubt and danger that Parker, urged by a nervous staff officer, ordered up signal No. 39, which meant "Discontinue action" (that is, stop the fight if you think you ought to do so). The story commonly told about this famous signal is wrong; as most stories of the kind are pretty sure to be. Signal 39 did not order Nelson to break away, no matter what he thought, but meant that he could leave off if he thought that was the right thing to do. As, however, he thought the chance of winning still held good, he told his signal lieutenant simply to "acknowledge but not repeat No. 39." Then he added, "and keep mine flying," his own being the one for "close action." These two signals then gave Nelson's captains the choice of going on or breaking off, according to which seemed the better. All went on except "the gallant, good Riou," a man who, if he had lived today, would certainly have won the Victoria Cross. Riou was in charge of a few small vessels which were being terribly mauled by the Trekroner batteries without being able to do any good themselves. So he quite rightly hauled off, thus saving his division from useless destruction. Unluckily he was killed before getting out of range; and no hero's death was ever more deeply mourned by all who knew his career. Good commanders need cool heads quite as much as they need brave hearts.

Shortly after Riou had left the scene the Danes began to fire more slowly, while the British kept up as well as ever. But, the Trekroner forts that had hammered Riou now turned their guns on the _Monarch_ and _Defiance_, making the battle in that part of the line as hot as before; while some Danes so lost their heads as to begin firing again from ships that had surrendered to the British. This was more than Nelson could stand. So he wrote to the Danish Crown Prince: "Lord Nelson has been commanded to spare Denmark when she no longer resists. The line of defence which covers her shores has struck to the British flag. Let firing cease, then, that he may take possession of his prizes, or he will blow them into the air along with the crews who have so nobly defended them. The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the enemies, of the English."

Nelson refused the wafer offered him to close up the letter, saying, "this is no time to look hurried"; and, sending to his cabin for a candle, wax, and his biggest seal, he folded and sealed the letter as coolly as if writing in his house at home instead of in a storm of shot and shell. After arranging terms the Danes gave in; and the whole Armed Neutrality of the North came to nothing. For the second time Nelson had beaten Napoleon.

This defeat did not really harm the Northern Powers; for, though they liked their own shipping to do all the oversea trading it could, they were much better off with the British, who _could_ take their goods to market, than with Napoleon, who could _not_. Besides, the British let them use their own shipping so long as they did not let Napoleon use it; while Napoleon had to stop it altogether, lest the British, with their stronger navy, should turn it to their advantage instead of his. In a word: it was better to use the sea under the British navy than to lose it under Napoleon's army.

Both sides now needed rest. So the Peace of Amiens was signed in March 1802. With this peace ended Napoleon's last pretence that he was trying to save the peoples of the world from their wicked rulers. Some of them did need saving; and many of the French Revolutionists were generous souls, eager to spread their own kind of liberty all over Europe. But British liberty had been growing steadily for a good many hundreds of years, and the British people did not want a foreign sort thrust upon them, though many of them felt very kindly toward the French. So this, with the memory of former wars, had brought the two countries into strife once more. All might then have ended in a happy peace had not Napoleon set out to win the overlordship of the world, like Philip and Louis before him and the German Kaiser since. France, tired of revolutionary troubles and proud of the way her splendid army was being led to victory, let Napoleon's dreams of conquest mislead her for twelve years to come. Hence the new war that began in 1803 and ended on the field of Waterloo.

Napoleon had used the peace to strengthen his navy for a last attempt to bring the British to their knees. Villeneuve, the admiral who had escaped from the Nile, was finally given command of the joint fleets of France and Spain in the south, while Napoleon himself commanded the great army of invasion at Boulogne, within thirty miles of England. "Let us," said Napoleon, "be masters of the Channel for six hours and we shall be the masters of the world." But he knew that the only way to reach London was to outwit Nelson.

Napoleon's naval plans were wonderfully clever, like all his plans. But they were those of a landsman who failed to reckon with all the troubles of bringing the different squadrons of the French and Spanish fleets together in spite of the British blockade. Moreover, they were always changing, and not always for the better. Finally, toward the end of August, 1805, when he saw they were not going to work, he suddenly began a land campaign that ended with his stupendous victory over the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz early in December.

But meanwhile the French and Spanish fleets had remained a danger which Nelson wished to destroy at its very source, by beating Villeneuve's main body wherever he could find it. At last, on the 21st of October, after two years of anxious watching, he caught it off Cape Trafalgar, at the northwest entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. Directly he saw he could bring on a battle he ran up the signal which the whole world knows, and which we of the Empire will cherish till the end of time: "England expects that every man will do his duty." That he had done his own we know from many an eye-witness, as well as from this entry in his private diary three months before Trafalgar: "I went on shore for the first time since the 16th of June 1803; and, from having my foot out of the _Victory_, two years wanting ten days." During all this long spell of harassing duty he kept his fleet "tuned up" to the last pitch of perfection in scouting, manoeuvring, and gunnery, so as to be always ready for victorious action at a moment's notice.

Villeneuve had thirty-three battleships, Nelson only twenty-seven. But these twenty-seven all belonged to one navy and were manned by crews who had been drilled for battle on the open sea without a single spell of mere harbour work, like the French and Spaniards. Still, the enemy were brave, and Nelson remarked that "they put a good face on it." But he quickly added, "I'll give them such a dressing as they never had before." It was a lovely day of light west wind and bright sunshine as the British bore down to the attack in two lines-ahead ("follow-my-leader"), the port (or left) one led by Nelson in the immortal _Victory_, flying the battle signal "Engage the enemy more closely," and the starboard one by Collingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_. The first shot was fired on the stroke of noon, or at "eight bells," as they say on board. Nelson's plan, as usual, was to strike hardest at the weakest spot, which he knew he could reach because his fleet was so much better trained. He and Collingwood went through the enemy's long line at two spots about half a mile apart, crushing his centre, and separating his front from his rear. The double-shotted British guns raked the enemy vessels with frightful effect as their muzzles passed close by the sterns. The enemy fired back bravely enough; but with much less skill and confidence. The Spaniards were already beginning to feel none too friendly toward Napoleon; while the French had already lost their trust in Spanish help.

Yet the Spaniards were a proud people, not to be beaten without a hard struggle; while the French were bound to do their best in any ease. So the fight was furious and fought at the closest quarters. The gunners could often see every feature of their opponents' faces and were sometimes scorched by the flashes from opposing guns. The _Victory_ was fighting a terrific duel with the French _Redoutable_, and Nelson was pacing the deck with his flag-captain, Hardy, when, at 1.25, he suddenly sank on his knees and fell over on his side, having been hit by a musket-shot fired from the enemy's mizzentop, only fifteen yards away. "They've done for me at last," said Nelson, as Hardy stooped over him. A Sergeant of Marines and two bluejackets ran forward and carried him below. Though in great agony he pulled out his handkerchief and, with his one hand, carefully covered his face, in the hope that the men between decks would not see who was hit.

While Nelson lay dying below, the fight raged worse than ever round the _Victory_. The _Redoutable's_ tops were full of snipers, who not only plied their muskets to good effect but also used hand grenades (something like the bombs of the present day). The _Victory's_ deck was almost cleared by the intense fire of these men, and the crew of the _Redoutable_ got ready to board. But on the word "_Repel boarders_!" so many marines and blue-jackets rushed up from below that the French gave up the attempt. The musketry fire was still very hot from one ship to another; and the French snipers were as bad as ever. But those in the mizzentop from which Nelson was hit were all sniped by his signal midshipman, young Jack Pollard, who, being a dead shot, picked off the Frenchmen one by one as they leaned over to take aim. In this way Pollard must have hit the man who hit Nelson.

An hour after Nelson had fallen the _Victory_ had become so battered, so hampered by a maze of fallen masts and rigging, and so dangerously holed between wind and water, that Hardy was glad of her sheering off a bit, out of the thick of the fight. He then ran below to see Nelson, who at once asked, "Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?" "Very well, my Lord," said Hardy, "we have twelve of the enemy's ships." "I hope," said Nelson, "that none of ours have struck." "There's no fear of that," said Hardy. Another hour passed before Hardy could come back to say, "I am certain that fourteen or fifteen have struck." "That's well," said Nelson, "but I bargained for twenty." Then, rousing himself to give his last order, he said, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor!" for he knew a storm was coming and that Cape Trafalgar was a bad lee shore (that is, a shore toward which the wind is blowing). A few minutes later he died, murmuring with his latest breath, "Thank God, I've done my duty."

Trafalgar was so complete a victory that Napoleon gave up all attempts to conquer the British at sea. But he renewed his "Continental System" and made it ten times worse than before. Having smashed the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz, and the Prussian one at Jena, he wrote the Berlin Decrees, ordering every port on the continent of Europe to be shut against every single British ship. This was blockade from the land. The British answered with a blockade from the sea, giving notice, by their Orders-in-Council, that their Navy would stop the trade of every port which shut out British vessels. Napoleon hoped that if he could bully Europe into obeying his Berlin Decrees he would "conquer the sea by the land." But what really happened was quite the other way round; for Napoleon's land was conquered by the British sea. So much of the trade of the European ports had been carried on by British vessels that to shut these out meant killing the trade in some ports and hurting it in all. Imagine the feelings of a merchant whose country's army had been beaten by Napoleon, and whose own trade was stopped by the Berlin Decrees, when he saw the sea open to all who were under the care of the British Navy and closed to all who were not! Imagine also what he thought of the difference between Napoleon's land-power, which made him a prisoner at home, and British sea-power, which only obliged him to obey certain laws of trade abroad! Then imagine which side he thought the better one for trade, when he saw Napoleon himself being forced to choose between letting British vessels into France with cloth or letting his army go bare!

Slowly, at first, but very surely, and faster as time went on, the shutting of the ports against British vessels roused the peoples of Europe against Napoleon. They were, of course, roused by his other acts of tyranny--by the way he cut up countries into new kingdoms to suit himself first and the people of these countries last or not at all, by his ordering foreigners about like slaves, and by his being a ruthless conqueror wherever he could. But his shutting of the ports added a kind of slow starvation in the needs and arts of life to all his other sins; while the opening of the ports to British fleets and armies, and to the British trade that followed, meant the bread of life and liberty. Thus Trafalgar forced Napoleon either to give in at once or else to go on raising those hosts of enemies which sapped his strength in Spain and Russia and caused his fall at Waterloo.