Hood feared he might have to rely on starvation to take Bastia and Calvi, the last two towns in French hands; Nelson, still over-confident, believed a naval attack would suffice, even though there were twice as many French troops as he had reported to Hood. He put his trust in the ‘invincible’ British seamen.10 This immature outburst ignored the lessons of Toulon. It was unwise to treat the French with contempt.
The pace to the campaign was tied to the political situation on the mainland. An early British success in Corsica would do much to counteract the adverse impression left by the evacuation of Toulon. Britain needed allies on the mainland, and a fleet based on Corsica would secure their seaward flanks. Elliot made this point,11 and Hood acted.
Dundas’s resignation did not help Hood, since his successor General D’Aubant was equally averse to attacking Bastia. Elliot considered D’Aubant a fool, others thought him a coward – whatever the truth, the military force was paralysed while he remained. As Nelson considered taking Bastia by blockade, Hood’s remarkable fund of mental resource provided an unconventional solution to the command problem. The fleet had been given several regiments of troops in lieu of the Marines that were not ready when they left Britain. Hood recalled these men, some six hundred, telling D’Aubant he needed them for a fleet action.12 In fact he planned to land them at Bastia with junior artillery officers and a naval party under Nelson.13 Suitably inspired, Nelson detached a frigate to Naples to borrow mortars, shells and stores. The covering letter to Sir William Hamilton reflected his disgust with the soldiers’ caution – it was San Juan all over again.14 While Nelson waited, he sounded the approaches to Bastia, harassed the garrison at night with his gunboats and prepared a captured frigate as a floating battery.
When a joint service Council of War did not endorse his plans Hood simply ignored it, landing a force of 1,000 soldiers and 250 sailors three miles north of Bastia. They quickly secured a strong position only 2,500 yards from the citadel, and prepared for a siege. He instructed Nelson to ensure the blockade of the town was complete, in case he had to rely on starvation, and waited until the batteries were ready.
By 11 April the sailors had installed seven heavy guns from the Agamemnon and four mortars from Naples with a good supply of shot and shell. Hood’s demand that the garrison should surrender was rejected with customary insouciant Republican bravado. The attack commenced on Hood’s signal. He directed operations from the anchorage, advising Nelson on new positions and engineering co-operation with Paoli’s irregulars. The following day a small group of officers and men were in the battery to observe the effect of the bombardment when a French shot killed a servant, only inches from Nelson.
On 20 April Nelson learned that Corsica was to become a possession of the English crown. The following day Hood urged him to move quickly – Elliot had just reported the French were advancing against Sardinia:
The situation of affairs in Piedmont and Italy makes the reduction of Bastia of the greatest importance as soon as possible, that it will be reduced I have not the slightest shadow of a doubt, but it is an object to happen soon.15
The driving intellect at Bastia was Hood; Elliot provided political context. While D’Aubant carped from San Fiorenzo, the force ashore got on with the job. Nelson, finally at the heart of proceedings, and under the watchful eye of his Lord since April, was full of enthusiasm and energy, pushing himself forward wherever possible, anxious to gain full credit for the triumph. However, the wily Hood did not give him sole command of the troops and seamen he sent ashore, and when Nelson asked Hood to confirm his authority over all the naval detachments Hood merely requested the junior officers to follow Nelson’s directions, carefully avoiding the word ‘order’.16 Fortunately Nelson chose to read Hood’s letter as a vote of confidence, and cheerfully reminded Fanny that:
[A] brave man dies but once, a coward all his life long. We cannot escape death, and should it happen, recollect that it is the will of Him in whose hands are the issues of life and death. As to my health it was never better, seldom so well.17
Nelson’s health, always a mirror of his soul, reflected the fact that he was busy from dawn to dusk, under fire and enjoying the confidence of his beloved chief. Most of his work was arduous rather than glorious, organising working parties to bring up cannon, shot, stores and fascines, building batteries and employing enough seamen to crew a frigate. To hasten the siege, Hood advised building a new battery on a commanding ridge; it opened fire on 1 May. Now that Elliot had returned, Lieutenant-Colonel John Moore, who had served under Dundas and shared his doubts about Hood’s approach, finally began to understand that the wider political context was driving the pace of operations, not pure military logic.18 By contrast Nelson immediately understood Elliot’s argument that Corsica would give Britain command of the Mediterranean. However, that depended on taking the two towns.
Worried by the paucity of deserters, suggesting the French were not starving, Hood ordered more guns landed. Then the squadron captured a boat full of refugees, who indicated that the French were in desperate straits. As the siege drew to a close he was anxious to keep D’Aubant’s name off the capitulation, keeping the military glory for the junior officers ashore, while personally controlling the surrender.19 When Moore wrote to say that six hundred more soldiers had arrived, and D’Aubant was now prepared to cross the mountains from San Fiorenzo, Hood brusquely told him not to bother: the town was about to fall and he could save himself the trouble.20 Moore argued that starvation alone had caused the town to fall. Even if he was correct, the honour still belonged to Hood, who had directed Nelson to blockade the town, while the army did nothing to aid the process.
Thoroughly disenchanted with his situation, and unable to influence the admiral, D’Aubant tried to hand over command, but Hood would not even provide a frigate to take him to the mainland. Instead D’Aubant brought his small force onto the ridge above Bastia just as the surrender negotiations were beginning. Bastia had cost seventeen British lives, twenty thousand shot and shell, and forty-two precious days. A blockade would have been equally certain, but taken longer. In too much of a hurry to allow any prolonged discussion, Hood allowed the garrison of 3,500 – more than double the besieging force – the honours of war and a passage home. But though he found time to thank the officers and men, whose conduct and character he promised to remember ‘to the end of my life’, Nelson was given no time to celebrate: ‘You will do well to prepare for the removal of everything from your present posts, as no time must be lost in going off Calvi.’21
Always anxious that his actions were appreciated at home, Nelson wrote to Locker, reminded brother William that the French ships taken at San Fiorenzo and Bastia were those he had engaged, and told Fanny that Hood’s thanks in public and private were ‘the handsomest that man can pen’.22 Yet in the public dispatch on the capture of Bastia, a triumph in which Nelson fancied he had played a key role, he received slight praise. Hood had skilfully played on Nelson’s anxiety to be noticed, employing him on missions where decision, energy and initiative were essential. He quickly assuaged Nelson’s wounded pride, using private flattery to make up for a public oversight, not for the first time.
*
In early June the French tried to interfere in the Corsican campaign, sending their hurriedly refitted, scratch-manned fleet to sea. On 5 June Hood heard the French were at sea. Believing himself heavily outnumbered, Hotham had retreated from seven sail with six of his own. As Hotham withdrew to San Fiorenzo Hood beat round from Bastia, joined him off Calvi on 9 June and signalled for a general chase as soon as he saw the French. Agamemnon soon took the lead, but the French scuttled into Gourjean Bay, close by St Tropez, before the British could catch them. While he planned his next move, Hood detached Nelson back to Bastia to pick up the stores and move on Calvi. If the French had a fleet there was no time to lose. They would throw troops and supplies into Calvi if they had the chance, and upset all his calculations.
Nelson was now in command of the naval force
at Calvi, while General Sir Charles Stuart, Dundas’s replacement, commanded the troops. Nelson joined Stuart at Bastia, picked up 150 troops and their equipment, stopped for further supplies at San Fiorenzo, then set sail. They landed a few miles from Calvi on 17 June. After inspecting the defences Stuart decided to land the troops, sailors and guns for the siege. Calvi, with three outlying works and a town wall, posed some problems, and there was little time for finesse. No sooner had the forces got ashore, moreover, than a gale drove the ships out to sea, cutting off contact for three days.
Veterans from Bastia knew that another siege would require large supplies of shot, powder and cannon. There were few surpluses so far from home, so Nelson checked with Hood before landing guns. The batteries were armed with French twenty-six-pounders from the Commerce de Marseilles, twenty-four-pounders from Agamemnon and the Neapolitan mortars.23
Hood, meanwhile, had been given good reason to think the French fleet had been reinforced from Brest and so had joined Hotham. On 10 June, he had chased the French ships into Gourjean Bay, believing that a direct attack with nearly two-to-one superiority would overwhelm them. But the wind failed, giving the French two days to improvise shore batteries and gunboats. Hood reluctantly accepted the judgement of a Council of War that he could not get at the French in Gourjean Bay. Leaving Hotham to cover the French ships, he returned to Calvi.24 There were problems at Calvi: General Stuart, who had initially shown more enthusiasm for joint operations than his predecessors, was now taking the same narrow-minded, wearyingly critical attitude, threatening to throw up his command if Hood did not explain his pursuit of the French fleet.25
On 27 June, after beating off a sortie by the garrison at Calvi, the British installed their guns and prepared to open fire. Nelson continued the practice he had adopted at Bastia, of sending Hood a daily journal of events, much to the annoyance of the army. On 4 July the first battery opened on the outlying fort of Monachique. Stuart immediately requested 250 sailors to move his shot and stores. An attempt to advance a new work against the Mozzello fort that night failed because the army officer in charge started too late. However, Stuart asked Nelson to build a work inside the Revallata Point to open on the seaward flank of the French defences, to draw fire from the main battery. He also managed to cover the construction of a new work against the Mozzello by feinting an attack on the advanced work Monteciesco. As the fifth of the six guns was being placed in the new work the French realised their error and opened a heavy fire of grapeshot. The naval officer placing the gun, Walter Serocold, was killed.26 For Nelson his death was glorious: ‘He fell as an officer should, in the service of his country.’27
Nelson himself did not escape. The French abandoned the Monteciesco battery on 11 July, but opened a heavy fire on new British works at daylight the following morning. Nelson was hit in the face by a shower of sand and small stones thrown up from the breastwork by a French round shot. An inch or two higher and it would have taken off his head.28 Nelson made light of the wound, treating it as a badge of honour. He remained ashore, reporting himself ‘a little hurt’.29 But the sight of his eye would not recover: in addition to rupturing a blood vessel he appears to have damaged the optic nerve.30 The eye was not disfigured, although the pupil was unusually large. The disability was not fatal to his career, but it must have affected depth perception and the judgement of distance, valuable assets to a commander making critical decisions involving time and distance in battle. Nelson quickly adjusted, however, and came to rely on the eyes of his subordinates. It may be surmised that among his many qualities, Thomas Hardy had excellent vision.
Stuart, for all the skill with which he had out-thought the French commander, lacked the youth and optimism that underpinned Nelson’s activity. The siege of Calvi had hardly begun before he was writing home for permission to retire once it was over.31 Though Hood’s decision to remain and good progress in the batteries temporarily improved his outlook a few days later, Stuart had protested vehemently when Hood suggested summoning the garrison. Taken aback, Hood unburdened himself in confidential letters to Nelson. He was concerned by the rapid progress made by the French fleet, which threatened to upset the strategy of the theatre, discouraging allies and crippling British operations. No sooner had this problem passed than Stuart was complaining that Nelson had revealed his plan to storm the key Mozzello outwork to Hood. The senior officers ashore were uncomfortably aware that Hood relied on Nelson for daily reports on operations, and that they depended on naval support. Hood advised Nelson and Captain Hallowell to keep their own counsel.
The capture of Fort Mozzello, the key defensive position in front of the town, and the Fountain battery on the night of 18 July cheered the soldiers, especially as they kept the sailors out of the action.32 Although the squadron off Toulon reported that no more French ships had arrived, Hood had become obsessed by the idea that a detachment from Brest was coming, to outnumber his fleet. ‘This makes the speedy reduction of Calvi of the utmost importance’, he wrote.33 Although Hood shared his concerns with Stuart, the General merely asked for more sailors to help ashore, as his troops were tired. Stuart’s pessimism even affected Nelson, who redoubled his efforts to build fresh batteries and persuade Hood to spare more powder. Hood disagreed with the military prognosis, and wondered what the extra men were for.34
In reality the siege was going well: superior skill and resources favoured the British, even if the harsh terrain and lack of natural cover forced them to build their batteries from barrels packed with earth. Stuart’s mood continued to be dark, however, and truce negotiations failed. After a galley broke through the blockade the artillery attack was redoubled, and on 1 August a flag of truce was hung out on the city wall. It was not a moment too soon for the British, who were sickening under the enervating Corsican ‘Lion Sun’.35 It mattered little how far the capitulation was secured by the bombardment, and how far by starvation: the British had no time to sit and wait for the French to run out of rations. With a large and complex theatre to command, Hood could not afford to have his fleet tied down by a prolonged blockade while the French were preparing for sea and active on the mainland. The balancing act had succeeded, however: Hood had kept the French fleet blocked up, taken Corsica and saved Italy. These prizes were secure while the British commanded the sea.36
The French marched out of Calvi on 10 August, to be shipped home. Nelson was already hard at work getting his guns and men back on board the Agamemnon, anxious not to miss the fleet action that he expected now Hood was ‘at liberty to look at the French fleet’. First he had to organise transports for the enemy soldiers and take over the captured frigates in the bay,37 yet he found time to compile a full report on the siege and the prospects of the new British territory for Clarence.38 That done, he hastened away to Leghorn to overhaul his tired and neglected ship in the best refit facility this side of Plymouth. Hood and Stuart argued about how many troops should be sent to help man the fleet, while Moore carped that the removal of the sailors left all the work to his men. It was an unedifying conclusion to a successful siege, which had secured the island for the Anglo-Corsican partnership.
*
After the siege, Corsica became subject to the British crown, which took over responsibility for external policy, but the island retained the legislative assembly that had voted for the union – a compromise consciously modelled on Britain’s relationship with Ireland. Elliot was appointed Viceroy, but the arrangements were loose, reflecting the lack of opportunity for a thorough discussion of policy in London and the impossibility of responding to local events from Westminster. Once again Hood had triumphed, against astonishing odds, with a little help from the army.
Nelson’s role in the capture was useful, though by no means as important as most of his biographers have implied. Yet he had derived great benefit from the Corsican campaign, which formed the last stage in his education in strategy and leadership. It had earned him the opportunity for an independent command, no small achievement when there were seven
admirals in the fleet. The two sieges were hard and dangerous, but they made an impression in the right quarters. Hood found that he could trust Nelson to act on his own, a marked contrast to the older colleagues who had signally failed to meet his standards off Gourjean Bay. Elliot, too, had formed a high opinion of this dynamic young captain, and this relationship would play a major role in Nelson’s strategic education.
Nelson, in turn, had seen enough inter-service cooperation to convince him that the army was slow-moving, hidebound and negative. The generals would not see that command of the sea was the key to Britain’s Mediterranean strategy: the army was too small, too inexperienced and too widely spread to be used for large operations. Stuart, though an improvement on his predecessors, had no grander concept of strategy, and failed to grasp the points about the wider theatre that both Hood and Elliot were at pains to explain. As Nelson observed:
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