And Acton, relieved from the burdens of bureaucracy,
at last pressed Great Britain for a Mediterranean
squadron. He and the Queen had both determined
that their forced neutrality should be of short duration.
If we would appreciate Emma's influence for Eng-
land at Naples, the tone of his correspondence at this
date should be compared with his indifference during
1 88 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
the earlier portion of the preceding year. The
Mediterranean expedition which Nelson was to lead to
such decisive triumph was far more the fruit of Neapol-
itan importunities than of English foresight.
Buonaparte had boasted that he would republicanise
the Two Sicilies also. No sooner was Acton apprised
of the fact than he immediately invited Sir Gilbert El-
liot, who happened to be visiting Naples, to meet him
and the Hamiltons. He again murmured against Lord
Grenville's finesse. He assured Sir Gilbert that his
country had strained every sinew " to move and en-
gage seventeen million Italians to defend themselves,
their property, and their honour " ; all had been vain for lack of extraneous assistance; even their fleet had
laboured to no purpose; in his quaint English, their
" head-shiprfian had lost his head, if ever he had any."
The case was now desperate. All hinged on a suffi-
cient Mediterranean squadron. " Any English man-
of-war, to the number of four at a time," could still be provisioned in Sicilian or Neapolitan ports. Their
compelled compact with France allowed no more. And
at a moment when the French were disquieting Naples
by insurgent fugitives from the Romagna and else-
where, Napoleon's smooth speeches were, said Acton,
mere dissimulation. A " change of masters " might soon ensue. By the April of 1798 Acton was still
more explicit in his correspondence with Hamilton. A
fresh incursion was now definitely menaced. Naples
was being blackmailed. The Parisian Directors of-
fered her immunity, but only if she would pay them
an exorbitant sum; otherwise* she must be absorbed in
the constellation of republics, while her monarch must
join the debris of falling stars. Viennese support was
little more than a forlorn hope for ravaged Italy. In
the King's name he implored Hamilton to forward an
English privateer to announce their desperate plight
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
and urgent necessities to Lord St. Vincent. " Their Majesties observe the critical moment for all Europe,
and the threatens of an invasion even in England.
They are perfectly convinced of the generous and ex-
tensive exertions of the British nation at this moment,
but a diversion in these points might operate ad-
vantage for the common war. Will England see all
Italy, and even the two Sicilies, in the French hands
with indifference?" The half-hearted Emperor had
at last consented to think of assisting his relations,
though only should Naples be assailed ; this perhaps
might " hurry England." Seventeen ships of the line would soon be ready; there were seventy in Genoa,
thirty at Civita Vecchia. These could carry " perhaps 8000 men." But the French at Toulon could convey
18,000. " With the English expedition we shall be
saved. This is my communication from their
Majesties."
Hamilton's reply must have been bitterly cautious,
for Acton in his answer observes, " We cannot avoid to expose that His Sicilian Majesty confides too much
in His Britannic Majesty's Ministry's help."
And all this time Emma is never from Maria Caro-
lina's side ; writing to her, urging, praising, heartening, caressing the English. The Queen is all gratitude to
her humble friend, whose enthusiasm is an asset of her
hopes : " Vous en etes le maitre de mon cceur, ma
chere miledy," she writes in her bad and disjointed French ; " ni pour mes amis, comme vous, ni pour mes opinions [je] ne change jamais." She is " impatient for news of the English squadron." But she is still a wretched woman, disquieted by doubts and worn with
care, as she may be viewed in the portraits of this
period. She had deemed herself a pattern of duty,
but had now woke up to the consciousness of being
execrated by her victims ; while the loyal Lazzaroni, al-190 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
ways her mislikers, visited each national calamity on
her head. Gallo, Acton, Belmonte, Castelcicala, Di
Medici all had been tried, and except Acton, who
himself had wavered, all had been found wanting. It
is the Nemesis of despots, even if enlightened, to rely
successively on false supports, to fly by turns from
betrayed trust to treachery once more trusted. Emma
at all events would ndt fail her, and never did. :< You may read," says Thackeray, " Pompeii in some folks'
faces." Such a Pompeii-countenance must have been
the Queen's.
The English squadron was at last a fact. On
March 29, 1798, Nelson hoisted his flag as Rear-
Admiral of the Blue on board the Vanguard. On
April 10 he sailed on one of the most eventful voyages
in history.
And meanwhile Maria Carolina, with Emma under
her wing, might be seen pacing the palace garden, and
eagerly scanning the horizon from sunny Caserta for
a glimpse of one white sail.
Sister Anne stands and waits on her watch-tower,
feverish for Selim's arrival, while anguished Fatima
peers into Bluebeard's cupboard, horror-stricken at its
gruesome medley of dismembered sovereigns martyrs
or tyrants which you please.
CHAPTER VII
TRIUMPH
1798
NELSON was in chase of Buonaparte's fleet.
Napoleon's Egyptian expedition was, per-
haps, the greatest wonder in a course rife with
them. He was not yet thirty; he had been victorious
by land, and had dictated terms at the gates of Vienna.
In Italy, like Tarquin, he had knocked off the tallest
heads first. Debt and jealousy hampered him at home.
It was the gambler's first throw, that rarest audacity.
For years his far-sightedness had fastened on the
Mediterranean; and now that Spain was friends with
France, he divined the moment for crushing Britain.
But even then his schemes were far vaster than his
contemporaries could comprehend. His plan was to
obtain Eastern Empire, to reduce Syria, and, after re-
casting sheikhdoms in the dominion of the Pharaohs,
possibly after subduing India, to dash back and con-
quer England. Italy was honeycombed with his repub-
lics. To Egypt France should be suzerain, a democracy
with vassals ; as for Great Britain, if she kept her King, it must be on worse terms than even Louis the Bourbon had once dared to prescribe to the Stuarts. This,
too, was the first and only time when he, an unskilled
mariner, was for a space in chief naval command.
Most characteristic was it also of him the encyclo-
paedist in action to have remembered science in this
enterprise against science's home of origin. That vast
191
; 192 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Armada of ships and frigates, that huge L'Orient,
whose very name was augury, those forty thousand
men in transports, did not suffice. An -array of
savants, with all their apparatus, swelling the muster
on board their vessel to no less than two thousand, ac-
companied the new man who was to make all things
new. It was nigh a month after Nelson started when
Napoleon sailed. Sudden as a flash of lightning, yet
impenetrable as the cloud from which it darts, he veiled his movements and doubled in his course.
It was on Saturday, June 16, that Hamilton first
sighted Nelson's approach. The van of the small
squadron of fourteen sail was visible as it neared Ischia from the westward and made for Capri. He at once
took up his pen to send him the latest tidings of the
armament which, eluding his pursuit, had now passed
the Sicilian seaboard. The glad news of Nelson's ar-
rival spread like wildfire. The French residents
mocked and. scowled. The people cheered. The sol-
emn ministers smiled. The royal family, in the depths
of dejection, plucked up heart ; the Queen was in
ecstasy. But Gallo and the anti-English group were
suspicious .and perplexed. They and the King still
waited on Austria. On Spain they could no longer
fawn.
Nelson's instructions were to water and provide his
fleet in any Mediterranean port, except in Sardinia, if
necessary by arms. It was not that for the moment he
needed refreshment for those scanty frigates, the want
of which, he wrote afterwards, would be found graven
on his heart. But he had a long and intricate enter-
prise before him. He was hunting a fox that would
profit by every bend and crevice, so to speak, of the
country. He could not track him without the cer-
tainty that, apart from the delays that force must en-
tail, all his requirements, perhaps for two months x
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 193
would be granted on mere demand. Even so early as
June 12 he had requested definite answers from Ham-
ilton as to what precise aid he could count upon from
a pseudo-neutral power trifling over diplomatic
pedantries with the slippery chancelleries of Vienna;
while some days before, Hamilton received from Eden
at Vienna a despatch from Grenville emphasising the
" necessity," as it was now regarded at home, for ensuring the " free and unlimited " admission of British ships into Sicilian harbours, and " every species of provisions and supplies usually .afforded by an ally."
Hamilton had tried in vain to surmount an obstacle im-
portant alike to France, to the King, and to Austria.
Nelson also knew too well the barrier set against com-
pliance by the terms of the fatal Franco-Neapolitan
pact of 1796. Not more than four frigates at once
might be received into any harbour of Ferdinand's
coasts. He knew that the Queen and her friends were
in the slough of despond. He knew too for the
Hamiltons had been in continual correspondence that
Austria was once more shilly-shallying. While Naples
was longing to break her neutrality, Austria, for the
moment satisfied with shame, was now secretly nego-
tiating, with all the long and tedious array of etiquette, preliminaries to a half-hearted arrangement. Even in
deliberation she would, as we have seen, only succour
Naples if Naples were attacked. Against this Napo-
leon had guarded : so far as concerned him and the
present, Naples should be left in perilous peace. He
was content with the seeds of revolution that he had
stealthily sown. Even as he passed Trapani on his
way to Malta, which already by the loth of June he
had invested (and whose plunder he had promised to
his troops), he pacified the Sicilians with unlimited re-assurances of good-will. And Nelson knew well also
that Maria Carolina and Emma chafed under the fet-
194 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
ters of diplomacy and of treaty that shackled action.
If only he could obtain some royal mandate for his
purpose, either through them for the Queen had
rights in Council or from Acton, rather than the
King still swayed by Gallo, he felt convinced of success.
Otherwise, should emergencies arise within the next
few 1 weeks, as arise they must, he would perforce hark
back to Gibraltar; and in such a water-hunt of views
and checks as he now contemplated, delay might spell
failure, and failure his country's ruin.
About six o'clock by Neapolitan time, on a lovely
June morning, Captains Troubridge and Hardy landed
from the Mutine, which, together with the Monarch,
on which was Captain T. Carrol, lay anchored in the
bay, leaving Nelson in the Vanguard with his fleet off
Capri. Troubridge, charged with important requests
by Nelson, at once proceeded to the Embassy.
Lady Hamilton's after-allegations have been much
criticised, and, step by step, stubbornly disputed, while even these, as will be urged, have perhaps been misread ; nor has her simpler account in her " King's
Memorial " been taken, still less Nelson's repeated assurances about her " exclusive interposition " to Rose, Pitt's favourable consideration, Canning's own acknowledgment, the neutrality at any rate of Grenville,
and a statement by Lord Melville, afterwards to be
mentioned.
Emma and her husband were awakened by their
early visitors, who included Hardy and, perhaps,
Bowen. Hamilton arose hurriedly, and took the of-
ficers off to Acton's neighbouring house. Some kind
of council was held, probably at the palace. In that
case Gallo, as foreign minister, may well have been
present. Troubridge, as Nelson's mouthpiece, stated
his requirements. Gallo, we know, was hesitating and
hostile. The whole arrangement with the court of
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 195
Vienna now lagging under his procrastination, would
be spoiled if Naples were prematurely to break with
France, and an open breach must be certain if succour
for the whole of Nelson's fleet were afforded at the
Sicilian ports in contravention of the burdensome en-
gagement with the French Directory; while it would
further be implied that the British fleet was at the
Neapolitan service. Recourse to the King would not
only be dangerous, but probably futile; the more so,
since the French minister at Naples was now citizen
Garat, a pedant, pamphleteer, and lecturer of the straitest sect among busybodying theorists. Such a man,
Gallo would urge, must be the loudest in umbrage at
even the appearance of pro-British zeal. Acton could
have rebutted these objections by observing that the
" order " need not be signed by Ferdinand, but merely informally by himself "in the King's name"; as, in fact, a sort of roving " credential " ; that it could be so worded as to imply no breach of treaty, but only the
refreshment of four ships at a time; that the gov-
ernors of the ports might be separately instructed to
offer a show of resistance if more were demanded of
>
them; that Garat need never know what had
transpired till the moment came when Austria had
signed her pact with Naples, and France might be
dared in the face of day; Troubridge's reception could
be (and was) represented as no more than a common
civility which Acton paid not only to English visitors,
but even to French officers. All must be " under the rose," and thus far only could Nelson be obliged. To Nelson's further requisition for frigates a polite non
possumus could be the only answer. Pending these
delicate Austrian negotiations, and until an open rup-
ture with France was possible with safety, Naples was
in urgent need of a permanent fleet in the Mediter-
ranean, and this, quid pro quo, Nelson naturally would
Memoirs Vol. 14 7
196 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
not bind himself to concede, though, so far as his in-
structions and the situation warranted, he was ready,
even eager, to do so.
This half-formal but scarcely effectual " order " was obtained.
There exists an original draft of Hamilton's official
recital of what passed to Lord Grenville. One of its
interlineations is perhaps significant. He first omitted, and afterwards added that the order was in Acton's
handwriting as well as in the King's name. Nelson
had wanted a quick royal mandate. He received a
ministerial order involving further instructions and
diplomatic delays. Moreover, five days after Trou-
bridge's visit, Acton thanked Hamilton for his " delicate and kind part " " under all the circumstances."
It may not have been quite such a plain-sailing affair
as it has seemed.
" We did more business in half an hour," wrote Hamilton in a final despatch to the same minister,
" than we should have done in a week in the usual
official way. Captain Troubridge went straight to
the point. ... I prevailed upon General Acton to
write himself an order in the name of His Sicilian
Majesty, directed to the governors of every port in
Sicily, to supply the King's ships with all sorts of
provisions, and in case of an action to permit the Brit-
ish seamen, sick or wounded, to be landed and taken
proper care of in their ports." The draft, however, contains a telling supplement. " He expressed only a wish to get sight of Buonaparte and his army, ' for,'
said he, 'By God, we shall lick them.' " Before Nelson's officers departed, they received also from Hamil-
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