Part 12

As he said in one of his most famous utterances while the British fleet was streaming into the bay: “Where there is room for a Frenchman to swing, there is room for an Englishman to get alongside him.”

That was Nelson. His idea was always to get alongside, to get as close as possible to the enemy and to hit him as hard as he could. Mere defeat was not enough for him. He wanted a fight to a finish, the finish being the absolute destruction or capture of the hostile force.

This was not because there was anything particularly ferocious in his nature. On the contrary, a more tender-hearted man never lived.

Before that one defeat of his at Teneriffe when he lost his arm, he wrote to his Commander-in-chief--this letter, by the way, was the last he ever wrote with his right hand--expressing solicitude for everybody but himself. None knew better than he the desperate nature of the venture, for in this very letter he said that on the morrow his head would probably be crowned either with laurel or cypress, and the last thing he did before he left his ship was to call his stepson to help him in burning his wife’s letters, and then ordered him to remain behind, saying: “Should we both fall, what would become of your poor mother?”

Happily Lieutenant Nisbet disobeyed the order to his face and went. When the bullet shattered Nelson’s arm at the elbow, it was his stepson who had the presence of mind to whip off his silk handkerchief and bind it round above the wound. But for this, Nelson would never have fought another battle, for he must have bled to death before he reached his ship.

It so happened that he could have been put much sooner on board the _Sea Horse_, but her commander, Captain Freemantle, was still on shore, and, for all he knew, might be dead or alive. His wife was on board the _Sea Horse_, and Nelson, wounded and bleeding as he was, insisted on going on, saying: “I would rather suffer death than alarm Mrs. Freemantle by letting her see me in this state when I can give her no tidings of her husband.” Freemantle, as it turned out, had been wounded in almost exactly the same place only a few minutes before.

When Nelson got back to his own ship, he would not hear of being slung or carried up on deck.

“I’ve got one arm and two legs left,” he said, “and I’ll get up by myself.”

And so he did, and up a single rope at that. In a strong man this would have been wonderful; in a mere weakling as Nelson physically was, it was little short of a miracle.

This was the man who, in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, with an utterly disabled ship, boarded and took two Spanish men-of-war both bigger than his own. One of them had eighty and the other a hundred and twelve guns; his own only mounted seventy-four.

It is, of course, entirely out of the question that in such a mere sketch as this I should attempt to follow Nelson through even a moderate proportion of the hundred and five engagements in which he personally fought, nor would it be fitting that I should attempt to emulate the brilliant and detailed descriptions which have illustrated the principal of them.

With his doings at Naples and Palermo, and his much-debated and inexplicable attachment to Lady Hamilton which unhappily began during this period, we have here no concern. The hero of the Nile, like every other great man, had his faults. Those who cavil at them are really blaming their possessors for not being perfect, for if really great men had no faults they would be perfect, and that is impossible, and, so much being said, the scene may now shift forthwith from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.

The Armed Neutrality is now only a phrase in history, but in the year 1801 it was a very serious reality. It was a league between Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. From the English point of view it meant this--that France, with whom we had now practically embarked in a struggle to the death, would be able, under the sanction of this league, to import from the shores of the Baltic the very articles that we did not wish her to have, and which she couldn’t get elsewhere. These were naval stores, pine-trees for masts and spars, hemp for rigging, tar, and so on.

It was very easy to see that this Armed Neutrality meant in plain English that these three Powers were quite agreeable to the smashing-up of Great Britain by France provided that they were not called upon to pay any of the expenses or suffer any of the other losses of the war. Denmark was therefore politely but firmly requested to detach herself from this league, the reason being that Denmark in those days kept the key of the Baltic. Denmark refused, and unhappily for her she did so just at the time when the Victor of the Nile had come home for a well-earned holiday.

We are not accustomed now, in the pride of our unequalled naval strength, to take very much account of the fleets of these three countries, but just before the Battle of the Baltic was fought it was a very different matter.

The Danes had twenty-three line-of-battle ships and thirty-one frigates, not counting bomb-vessels and guard-ships. Sweden had eighteen ships of the line, fourteen frigates and sloops and seventy-four galleys, as well as a small swarm of gun-boats, while Russia could put to sea eighty-two line-of-battle ships and forty-two frigates.

Such a force within the narrow waters of the Baltic was a very formidable one, but before we can arrive at a just appreciation of the magnificence and importance of the service which Nelson did for his country we must remember that of all European waters those of the Baltic, and especially of the approaches to it, are the most difficult and dangerous. Even with the aid of steam it would be no light matter to take a fleet into the Baltic under the guns of Elsinore and Kronberg were the lamps of the lighthouses extinguished and all the buoys removed.

What then must it have been to go in with a fleet of sailing ships utterly at the mercy of wind and current, to say nothing of the ice? Indeed, Southey tells us that when Nelson went to Yarmouth to join the fleet under Admiral Sir Hyde-Parker he found him a little nervous about dark nights and ice-floes.

His own remarks on the subject are very well worthy of remembrance: “These are not times for nervous systems,” he said. “I hope we shall give our northern enemies that hailstorm of bullets which gives our dear country the dominion of the sea. We have it and all the devils in the North cannot take it from us if our wooden walls have fair play.”

It was a most egregious mistake not to have made the Victor of the Nile and the Conqueror of the Mediterranean commander-in-chief of the Northern Squadron. His fame was already resounding through the world, and every one except the Lords of the Admiralty seems to have already recognised the fact that he was by far the finest sailor of the age.

Here again, too, officialism at home sadly crippled the work of valour and genius abroad. As usual Nelson had his own plans, and as usual they were the very best possible. His idea was to attack the Russian Squadron in Reval and the Danish in Copenhagen simultaneously, and by preventing their coalition make it too risky for the Swedes to join in.

Captain Mahan, who is certainly entitled to be considered one of the foremost naval authorities of the day, describes Nelson’s plan of attack as worthy of Napoleon himself, and says that if adopted it “would have brought down the Baltic Confederacy with a crash that would have resounded throughout Europe.” As it was, more timid counsels prevailed, but thanks to Nelson the end was the same, or nearly so.

We may gather some notion of the difficulty of getting on to the scene of battle when we read that no less than three English line-of-battle ships went aground before the battle began, and we also get an interesting glimpse of that old hand-to-hand style of naval warfare which has now passed away for ever, when we are told that the ships opened fire at a range of two hundred yards! Nowadays firing would begin at between three and four thousand. If two modern fleets were to get to business at that range the said business would probably consist of one broadside from each, one discharge of the big guns, and after that general wreck and ruin. It is not likely that either side would win, and it is certain that both sides would lose.

From ten to one the battle raged fast and furious, and so much damage had been done on the English side that Sir Hyde-Parker made a signal to leave off action. It was at this moment that Nelson uttered those immortal words, which were destined to be as famous even as his signal at Trafalgar:

“What? Leave off action? No, damn me if I do! You know, Foley, I have a right to be blind sometimes. No, I really don’t see the signal. Fire away!”

Those were days of hard swearing as well as hard hitting, and, considering all the circumstances, even the purest of modern purists may forgive a little vehemence of expression to the man who that day did such good work, not only for our grandfathers, but for us and our children.

An hour or so later Nelson performed one of the most memorable actions even of his life. The Danish ships and floating batteries were moored in-shore. The fire of the English guns was, as usual, terribly accurate, but as fast as the Danes were shot down, fresh crews were put on board the ships, and Nelson very soon saw that this simply meant butchery as long as a Danish ship floated.

Consequently he sat down and wrote a note to the Crown Prince of Denmark which he sent on shore under a flag of truce. This was the letter:

“Lord Nelson has directions to spare Denmark when no longer resisting, but if the firing is continued on the part of Denmark, Lord Nelson will be obliged to set on fire all the floating batteries he has taken without having the power of saving the brave Danes who have defended them.”

The result of this letter was a truce, and the truce led to an armistice and the separation of Denmark from the Armed Neutrality. This was very different treatment, we may well imagine, to anything that the French might have expected. In their case he considered extermination to be the only remedy for the disease which in his eyes they represented on earth.

It was curious that after such a day’s work this man, who had probably saved Europe from one of the greatest menaces that ever threatened it, should go back to his cabin and copy out love verses to send to Lady Hamilton--and yet that is just what he did, and at the end of them he wrote: “_St. George_, April 2nd, 1801, at 9 o’clock at night. Very tired after a hard fought battle.”

The Battle of Copenhagen and the death of the Tsar Paul put an end to the Northern Confederacy and to all the hopes of France in that direction. But Nelson was not satisfied, for the Russian fleet had escaped. He was, however, in some measure consoled by the recall of Sir Hyde-Parker and the realisation of his old ambition by his own appointment as commander-in-chief.

His next service was as commander of a sort of patrol fleet on the East Coast. Those were the days of the great invasion scare. Nelson never believed in it. In one of his letters to Lord Addington on the subject he said:

“What a forlorn undertaking! It is perfectly right to be prepared against a mad government, but with the active force your lordship has given me I may pronounce it impracticable.”

Soon after this, preliminaries of peace were signed, and to Nelson’s intense disgust the French Ambassador was enthusiastically received in London. Writing to his physician soon after he said:

“Can you cure madness? for I am mad that our damned scoundrels dragged the Frenchman’s carriage. I am ashamed for my country.”

The Peace was hollow and brief, for the mastery of the sea was not yet decided, and by the middle of 1803 we find Nelson back in the Mediterranean, not blockading Toulon, but rather trying to tempt the French out to a battle.

He even went so far as to appear to run away, and the French Admiral, Latouche-Treville, promptly wrote a letter giving a most glowing account of how he had chased the English away from Toulon. The idea of a Frenchman daring to say such a thing naturally made Nelson furious. Writing about it to his brother he said:

“If this fleet gets fairly up with M. Latouche his letter with all his ingenuity must be different from his last. We had fancied that we had chased him into Toulon, but from the time of his meeting Captain Hawker of the _Isis_ I never heard of his acting otherwise than as a poltroon and a liar. I am keeping his letter, and if I take him by God he shall eat it.”

This amiable design, however, the French Admiral baulked by dying, and when Nelson heard the news he remarked half-angrily: “He is gone, and all his lies with him.”

That is what he thought of the Admiral. This is what he thought of the fleet: “The French fleet yesterday was to appearance in high feather and as fine as paint could make them. Our weather-beaten ships, I have no fear, will make their sides like a plum-pudding.”

The interval between the ending of the Toulon blockade and the Battle of Trafalgar was filled chiefly by what may be described as a huge naval hunt. On the one hand, there were three French fleets manœuvring to get out and come together in the Channel with the object of overwhelming any English force that might try to prevent the embarkation of the Grand Army at Boulogne. But they had another object, and that was to get as far as possible out of Nelson’s way.

The first idea was to make a feint at the West Indies, and so away went Admiral Villeneuve with his fleet across the Atlantic, and away went Nelson post-haste after him. He got to the West Indies only to find that the Frenchmen had doubled on their tracks and gone back again, and so he immediately turned the prows of his weather-beaten and almost unseaworthy ships to the eastward, and for the second time chased the French across the Atlantic. But he missed them again, and on July 20, 1805, Nelson made an entry in his diary to the effect that he had that day gone ashore at Gibraltar--the first time that he had left the _Victory_ for two years all but ten days!

From Gibraltar he came home and spent a few weeks of rest at Merton, the estate which he had bought in Surrey. During this time a momentous naval duel was fought in the Channel. Admiral Villeneuve had sent some very important dispatches containing the plans for the concentration of the French and Spanish fleets to the commander of the Rochefort squadron by the _Didon_, a forty-four-gun frigate; but on her way the _Didon_ was met by the _Phœnix_, an English forty-gun frigate which, after the fashion of the times, proceeded to pound her to helplessness, then ran alongside and carried her by the board in the good old style. The result of this was that Villeneuve gave up all hope of the concentration and retreated to Cadiz, where he anchored on August 17th.

Admiral Collingwood, in command of the Atlantic squadron, at once sent off the frigate _Euryalus_ home with news. She dropped anchor at Spithead on the 1st of September. At five o’clock the next morning her captain presented himself at Merton and found Nelson already up and dressed. The moment Captain Blackwood entered the room Nelson’s face lit up and he said:

“I’m sure you bring me news of the French and Spanish fleets and I think I shall have to give them a beating yet. Depend upon it, Blackwood, I shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing.”

He left for London the same day to consult with the Admiralty, and it was on one of the visits that he then paid to the Secretary of State that he met for a few minutes--and for the only time in his life--the man whose name was destined to be linked with his in everlasting fame. This was Arthur Wellesley, some day to be Duke of Wellington, who was to do for the French on land what Nelson had been doing for them at sea.

Sir Arthur came away with a curious opinion of the little, pale, nervous, fidgety, one-armed man, who had won the two greatest battles in the history of naval warfare, and was about to surpass himself by winning yet a greater one.

From one point of view he was a vain, boastful, and somewhat womanish little man. From another, he was not only a great leader of men, but a statesman to boot. On the whole, the future Iron Duke came to the conclusion that the Hero of the Nile was “a very superior person.”

Nelson’s opinion of Wellington is unhappily lost to posterity. One can imagine the sort of language he would have used if any one had told him that a soldier had ventured to call him “a superior person.”

“For charity’s sake, send us Lord Nelson, ye men of power.” Such was the prayer of Captain Codrington of the _Orion_, serving with Collingwood’s fleet off Cadiz. But by the time this letter got home Nelson was with the fleet, and it is worthy of note that he reached the last and most glorious of his hundred battlefields on his birthday, the twenty-ninth of September.

The first thing that he did was to send home for more ships, not because he wasn’t ready to fight the French with what he had, but simply in pursuance of his constant policy with regard to them. In his dispatch to the Admiralty he said:

“Should they come out, I shall immediately bring them to battle, but though I should not doubt of spoiling any voyage they may attempt, yet I hope for the arrival of the ships from England that as an enemy’s fleet they may be annihilated.”

In a private letter which he wrote at the same time he said:

“It is annihilation that the country wants and not merely a splendid victory of twenty-three to thirty-six--honourable to the parties concerned, but absolutely useless in the extended scale to bring Buonaparte to his marrow-bones. Numbers can only annihilate. Therefore I hope the Admiralty will send the fixed force as soon as possible.”

He hoped for forty sail of the line, but when the ever memorable morning of the 21st had dawned he was only able to muster twenty-seven against thirty-three. At half-past eleven the famous signal: “England expects that every man will do his duty!” flew from the main-royal of the _Victory_.

I have no intention of attempting to re-write the thousand-times told tale of Trafalgar or of the disaster which plunged the nation into mourning in the midst of the exultation of triumph, for to do so would be alike superfluous and impertinent. Let it be enough to point out that the firing of the first gun marked the moment that Nelson had lived and fought for.

He was Commander-in-chief, as he had so often prayed to be, of the British Fleet, and there in front of him was the last fleet of any strength that his hated enemy France could muster. The battle, like the triumph, was his and his alone. Every man who that day did his duty fought by Nelson’s directions and, as it were, under Nelson’s eye, and never was victory more complete or defeat more crushing.

When it was over eighteen out of the thirty-three French and Spanish ships had been captured, and finally only eleven got back to Cadiz so shattered that they never again took the sea as men-of-war.

The crowning triumph of Nelson’s life left Britain without a rival so far as the mastery of the sea was concerned and threw the way open for conquest and colonisation in all parts of the world. Well might the great Admiral say when he lay dying in Captain Hardy’s arms: “Thank God, I’ve done my duty!”

No man ever died with nobler or more truly spoken words on his lips than these, for he had not only given his country the empire of the sea, but he had saved her from invasion by one who was perhaps the greatest military genius the world has known.

On the heights above Boulogne there stands a tall column surmounted by a figure of Napoleon. It was raised to commemorate the assembly of the Grand Army--that army which during the next ten years swept in an irresistible torrent of conquest from one end of Europe to the other. Napoleon’s back is turned on the white cliffs of England. If Nelson had never lived, he might have been facing the other way.

X

_WELLINGTON_

“_THE PRIDE AND THE GENIUS OF HIS COUNTRY._”

--QUEEN VICTORIA.

X

WELLINGTON

There is a very considerable amount of uncertainty, and there are also a few somewhat remarkable coincidences associated with the early youth of Arthur Wesley, better known to fame under the expanded form Wellesley, son of Garret, Earl of Mornington, and his wife Ann Hill, one of the daughters of Lord Dungannon.

It is somewhat singular, for instance, that the birthday of a child born in such a position should not be known within a day or two. His mother, who ought to have spoken with authority, said that the future conqueror of the great Napoleon entered the world on May-Day, 1769.

The date on his baptismal certificate is the 30th of May, and twenty-one years later a committee of the Irish House of Commons, to which he had just been elected, investigated the question on a petition which sought to show that he was not of full age, and this committee decided that he was born on or before the 29th of April. With regard to this latter date, however, it has been suggested that with the money and influence that he had behind him there would have been no difficulty in getting the Irish Parliament of those days to make him any age that he pleased.

But these things are only trifles. The fact of moment to the world is that Arthur Wellesley managed to get born into the world some three months before a certain other boy-baby was born at Ajaccio in Corsica. No one, of course, dreamt then that these two babies were going to grow up into Titans whose final struggle for the mastery of Europe was to shake the world forty-six years later.

There is perhaps no more noteworthy coincidence in modern history than the fact that Nelson, Wellington, and Napoleon should all have been born about the same time--for without Nelson’s victories at sea, Napoleon would in all probability have been irresistible on land, while, without Wellington’s splendid conduct of the Peninsular War, the crowning victory of Waterloo would perhaps never have been won, and so at least half the effects of Nelson’s hundred and five fights would have been destroyed.

This is all the more singular from the fact that nothing within the limits of human probability save the supreme genius and individual capacity of this Englishman and this Anglo-Irishman could possibly have stemmed the tide of Napoleonic conquest.

As I have pointed out in another of these sketches, the last decade but one of the eighteenth century was one of disaster and degradation for this country both at home and abroad. The national strength was sapped by corruption, and the national spirit was daunted by defeat.

The history of the next thirty or forty years distinctly shows that we had but one Nelson at sea, and but one Wellington on land. If they had been born a quarter of a century later, or even if they had not both come into the world about the same time as their mighty antagonist, the map of Europe would certainly be very different to what it is to-day, and it is also fairly safe to say that the map of the world would not now show nearly as much red as it does.

Arthur Wellesley, like certain others of our Empire-Makers who will be remembered, was a delicate, weakly boy and also, curiously enough, a dunce at school. As far as we know he was first sent to a school at Chelsea, whence in due course he went to Eton. Now there came a time when Eton was very proud indeed of being his Alma-Mater; but when she came to look back to see if she could remember anything about him she found that his career was absolutely undistinguished.