Ever with the highest Respect Believe Me
Your most obedient servant, Horatio Nelson
To days later he was gazetted Baron Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe. He was now Lord Nelson.
Nelson interpreted the signs in Naples to mean that the moment was opportune, an opinion largely based on that of Hamilton, the agent of British policy.17 In their haste they misunderstood Austria’s opportunistic Italian policy, and overrated the Neapolitans, who were putting on a show of strength without substance. Nelson’s initial failure to see past the fine new uniforms and smart appearance of King Ferdinand’s army was widely shared, especially by their Austrian commander, General Mack. While no one foretold just how feeble the army would be on the day of battle, Nelson soon recognised Mack’s inadequacies.18 Realising that Naples could not stand against France, he placed his hopes in an Austrian intervention.
Nelson left Naples on 15 October. He had not planned to return, but Ferdinand felt safer with him close by, and used his rank to secure this comfort. When Hamilton reported that Austrian Chancellor Thugut had promised support to Naples if she went to war, Nelson restricted his cruise to Malta.19 Here news of the Nile and the plundering of churches had sparked a revolt on 2 September, driving the French garrison into Valletta.20 Saumarez supplied the insurgents with a thousand French muskets from the captured ships when he passed on 25 September, and Nelson detached Ball to support them early in October. Arriving off the island on 24 October, Nelson realised that the three-thousand-man garrison was secure behind the stupendous fortifications, and had supplies for over a year. Tedious blockades were not part of Nelson’s repertoire, so he left Ball to sustain the effort. Back at Naples on 5 November, the royal family exacted a ‘promise’ that Naples Bay would never be without a British man-of-war.21 However, this was the cost of alliance, not a gesture of sycophancy.
In exchange for this naval presence Nelson expected action. The Anglo-Neapolitan war party, Hamilton and Nelson, allied with Acton and the Queen, received a powerful boost from a forged French plan to attack Naples,22 and persuaded Ferdinand, against his better judgement, to take the initiative. An amphibious force would seize Leghorn, to disrupt French communications in the north, while the main army under Mack drove the enemy from Rome. At the last moment, news from Vienna changed the Bourbons’ mood: Chancellor Thugut was refusing to honour the Austrian guarantee, insisting that it was a purely defensive arrangement, only invoked if France was the aggressor. In truth, Austria feared a Prussian stab in the back, and decided to wait until Russia guaranteed her security in turn. Vienna withdrew the guarantee of Naples on the very day Ferdinand decided to go to war, and subsequently accused Britain of trying to drag Austria into the conflict.
It was too late to pull back. An Anglo-Portuguese squadron with five thousand Neapolitan troops secured Leghorn without a fight on 29 November. Leaving Troubridge to blockade Toulon and Genoa, Nelson returned to Naples on 5 December. It was well that he did, for the main offensive had flattered only to deceive. Mack marched quickly to Rome, King Ferdinand entering the city in triumph on 29 November with a suspicious lack of resistance. The far smaller French force had withdrawn, regrouped, and a week later launched an audacious attack – in the face of which the undertrained and poorly led Neapolitan army panicked and ran away. Nelson evacuated the royals, the British community and a large amount of treasure from Naples to Palermo before the rampant French arrived. They left on 23 December, and the Vanguard soon ran into a terrible gale. Emma attended to the Bourbon exiles and nursed the youngest of the Princes, who died in her arms. It was her courage and resolve in a crisis that won Nelson’s admiration and ultimately his heart.
After these terrible events, Nelson was closely bound to the interests of the Neapolitan court, partly by a sense of responsibility, partly by strategic motives: Ferdinand was a major ally and his ports on Sicily were essential to British command of the Mediterranean. Moreover, to abandon him with half his kingdom under French rule would annihilate Britain’s reputation as an ally. The events of the past three months had shown Nelson at his best: repairing his fleet, developing a new strategy, exploiting the opportunities of the war and meeting the disasters of Mack’s army by rescuing vital British allies and their resources from the French. He had saved Sicily, and the operational capability of his fleet. He had made mistakes, but they reflected the intelligence to hand rather than poor judgement.
*
The New Year did not open auspiciously for Nelson. Despite the consummate skill with which he had conducted the evacuation from Naples, such retreats brought no glory and little credit. Now anchored in Palermo harbour, he was honour-bound to support his royal allies. While Ferdinand didn’t object to his exile, given Sicily’s fine hunting and food, Maria Carolina had little reason to celebrate. Recent events had exposed the republican underside of Neapolitan life that she had long feared, reprising the fate of her less fortunate sister in Paris, but this time more as farce than tragedy. The base ingratitude of the aristocracy, the bourgeois and the clergy was simply monstrous. The traitors had destroyed the sacred bond that united monarch and subject, and could not be forgiven – on this point the British and their allies were as one. In the midst of a war for national survival, French-supported traitors threatened the very existence of the state, and Pitt’s government felt this danger as keenly as Naples.
Nelson had no sooner disembarked his royal passengers and their retinue than he had to face further disagreeable news. The Foreign Secretary had directed the Admiralty to send Captain Sir William Sidney Smith – spy, mercenary and part-time diplomat – with a curious commission as naval officer and associate Minister to the Sublime Porte, or Turkish court. In finding a job for his cousin the Foreign Secretary simply ignored the command arrangements of St Vincent and Nelson, and Smith did not help matters by calmly assuming command of ships from Nelson’s squadron.23
Nelson had spread his forces to the best effect: Rear Admiral Duckworth covered Toulon from Minorca; Smith was active, if unpredictable, on the Levant station where Troubridge would shortly arrive to attack the transports at Alexandria; Ball commanded the blockade of Malta. Nelson threatened privately to come home on ‘health’ grounds if Smith were not placed under his authority.24 Nor was this an empty gesture: he asked Fanny to take a house in London, preferably the one his uncle Maurice had occupied near Hyde Park. He was further annoyed by the failure of the ministers to do anything for his family: the Prime Minister and the First Lord had not responded to his pleas to promote Maurice shortly after the Nile.25 To make matters worse, one relative who was honoured, the newly promoted Captain Josiah Nisbet, continued to behave in a rough and doltish manner.26
The war continued to go badly on the mainland, with the French advance on Naples aided by treachery and cowardice. Only the lower orders, the lazzaroni, were prepared to fight for the King. They made the French pay dearly for the city, but were betrayed by their social superiors, who opened the gates of Fort St Elmo to the invader.27 At Palermo Nelson, full of energy, ideas and optimism, was the mainspring of Bourbon resistance. He removed all the detested French émigrés from Sicily, tried to save the abandoned ships of the Bourbon navy from the French and stiffened the resolve of his hosts by promising not to leave Palermo. His widely spread forces were threatened by a rumoured French fleet from Brest arriving in theatre. If they came he would link up with Duckworth near Minorca, but he was confident the French would go to Toulon, not attack the British. He would defend Minorca only when it was attacked: he was prepared to run risks in order to recover the far bigger prize of Naples.28 This analysis, the basis of his decision to ignore Keith’s orders in July, was based on strategic judgement, not short-term or personal considerations.
To defend Sicily, meanwhile, Neapolitan troops were recovered from Leghorn, and local forces raised. Sicilians did not share the Neapolitan taste for alternative political systems, and their hatred of anything French was primeval: when a shipload of ophthalmia patients from
Bonaparte’s Egyptian army landed at Augusta, they were butchered by an angry crowd.29 Amidst the chaos and bloodshed, Nelson received a letter from Admiral Lord Howe, and took the time to explain his tactics at the Nile to ‘our great master in naval tactics and bravery’: he stressed the importance of his ‘band of brothers’ of Howe’s signal system, and that the state of the wind meant ‘we always kept a superior force to the enemy’.30 He might not have been one of Howe’s school, but the praise of this Grand Old Man was worth more than any popular acclaim. Equally pleasing were the comments Elliot, now Lord Minto, had made in supporting the vote of thanks in the House of Lords; it was a timely boost to his flagging morale to discover how much his countrymen appreciated his services.
Neapolitan artist Guzzardi captured the exhaustion, illness and strain so evident in Nelson’s letters.31 He desperately needed rest, but the royal family depended on him, the Hamiltons and Acton, the English quartet who worked on32 while prominent Neapolitans started to drift back to the mainland. Notable among them was Commodore Francesco Caracciolo, whom the king warned against serving the republicans.
Nelson was equally worried by the arrival of the Russians. He was not alone in rinding a Russo-Turkish alliance odd, but he was unusual in the vehemence of his warning that the Russians were not to be trusted. He supported the Sultan, declaring ‘I hate the Russians’, while Admiral Oushakov was ‘a blackguard’. He blocked Russian schemes to seize Malta by securing the reversion of the island from Ferdinand, who owned the freehold. If the French capitulated Ball was to take control for Britain and Naples.33 Although the island was of little use to the British while they held Minorca or had access to the ports of Sicily or Naples, in French hands it would be a major problem.
When St Vincent backed his complaints about Smith, he declared himself content to stay, ill as he was, as long as he had the admiral’s trust and the Queen’s faith.34 Without the support of the one man to whom he would defer, he would have gone home: he was at a low ebb, his spirit all but broken by the disasters of December. He even told Alexander Davison that ‘my only wish is to sink with honour into my grave’.35 This was impossible. He never lost his belief in a defining moment to die: he would find his own Quebec. On the same day and at the same desk he could pour out his flawed human thoughts and direct Mediterranean strategy with energy, penetration and that unique insight that elevated him above his contemporaries. He was something strange and rare.
As a French puppet republic was established to plunder the Kingdom of Naples, he sustained the various forces under his command. He had hoped to finish the siege of Valletta with an assault, but when it failed he immediately absolved Ball of any blame. When the Neapolitan government failed to send corn to Malta, he forcefully reminded Acton that the island belonged to the King of Naples. The same corn supplies, he told Ball, would be withheld if the Russians tried to act in the Islands. To preserve these supplies from pirates he worked to secure a truce between Sicily, Tunis and Tripoli, and to end a war between Portugal and Tunis. He recovered Moorish prisoners from the Portuguese flagship as a goodwill gesture, while flattering the Portuguese admiral, the Marquess de Niza, to secure his aid off Malta. Although Niza’s ships were little more than window-dressing, they made it possible for Ball to carry on without Russian aid.36 The North African pirate cities preoccupied Nelson, and would require a visit from his flagship during the crisis of 1799.
Nelson’s clear strategic view took in the entire theatre. He understood that the ‘Vesuvian’ Republic would only survive until the Emperor joined the war in Northern Italy, drawing off the French troops. His priority was to preserve Sicily, seize Malta, bombard Alexandria and be ready for the Austrian attack.37 Sicily would be safe if the people remained loyal, but he planned a second Bourbon evacuation just in case. Fearing Northern Italy would be overrun by the French before the Russians arrived, Nelson worked harder to bring the various allied forces, Turkish, Russian and Portuguese, into line, to secure Sicily and sustain the Maltese blockade. The key to the campaign was the port of Messina: if it could be held, Sicily was safe; if it fell, the game was up. To hold the fortress at Messina he turned to his old companion in arms, General Sir Charles Stuart at Minorca. Newly raised Sicilian forces were unready for a severe trial: the Neapolitans were untrustworthy and the citadel was too big to be held, as he had initially thought, by a garrison of marines and sailors under Troubridge. He needed a substantial force of British troops, at least a thousand, but preferably around three thousand. He requested Stuart’s help. In the mean time he would place Troubridge’s squadron off the harbour, once it returned from Egypt.38 No one would land there without a fight. Once again the overland mail link gave him ample excuse to keep the First Lord informed.39
To secure British interests at Malta, meanwhile, Ball was given chief command ashore by Ferdinand. For the duration of the war the campaign would be waged under joint British and Neapolitan flags.40 Nelson understood that the Maltese trusted the British to save them from the atheist French, the luxurious Knights and the indifferent Bourbons. He anticipated Ball becoming Governor after the island was taken, and stressed that the gift of a jewelled portrait of the Tsar would not stop him watching the Russian moves with the deepest suspicion.41 He was convinced they wanted the Island for a future war with Turkey,42 and politely warned Admiral Oushakov that the island was under British protections.43
*
The new Parthenopean Republic, proclaimed in Naples on 27 January 1799, was not a runaway success. While it satisfied the long-suppressed ambitions of the aristocracy, Freemasons, the intelligentsia and merchants, it had no popular support. The working classes preferred their vulgar, populist monarch, and the old order he represented, and it required the bayonets of a French army to keep the people committed to their own liberty. Outside the city the new regime had no support, prompting the King to send an agent to raise the royal standard in rural Calabria. Cardinal Fabrice Ruffo, a Prince of the Church, writer on military subjects and a local magnate, landed alone on 8 February 1799. Raising a core of support from his estates he formed a ‘Christian’ army of peasants, released prisoners and assorted ruffians. Initially Ruffo was not expected to achieve much, and was therefore given wide-ranging powers to act in the King’s name. Instead his cause triumphed in terrible fashion. Unable to discipline his ‘troops’, Ruffo had to stand by as they rampaged through captured towns, butchering anyone suspected of Jacobin sympathies.
The campaign in Calabria became a triumphal procession, and by mid-March Ruffo was within forty miles of Naples. In Sicily, meanwhile, the arrival of a thousand British regulars had secured Messina. By the time Troubridge returned from Egypt on 17 March, without effecting much against the well-prepared French position, Stuart’s arrival had released him to take command in the bay of Naples. He would impose a close blockade and support the counter-revolution. The steady improvement in allied fortunes encouraged Nelson to hang on to restore the Bourbons, despite his ill-health, before he went home. He could not, he informed his Commander in Chief, leave the court at Palermo.44 The fact that St Vincent respected this decision, when he could have ordered Nelson to any position in the Mediterranean or sent him home, suggests that he shared Nelson’s belief that it was the focal point of the campaign. While the Earl became fixated upon Minorca and the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, he left the active prosecution of the war to Nelson.45
As Ruffo’s strength grew, Ferdinand reduced his powers, instructing him on no account to offer terms to the rebels.46 The King would settle the fate of traitors, and took a severe line on any who had taken up arms against him. These instructions were sent to Nelson, to inform Troubridge’s operations.47 The counter-revolution had been promised Russian and even Turkish support, but the pace of Ruffo’s advance was such that this only arrived at the very end of the campaign. Instead Troubridge cut off the city and supported Ruffo’s advance, seizing two islands in the Bay of Naples on 3 April. This further undermined the already fragile authority of the Republic.
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News that the French had attacked the Austrians in mid-March was welcome, but there was still much to be done. At Nelson’s dictation King Ferdinand instructed Troubridge: ‘always bearing in mind, that speedy rewards and quick punishments are the foundation of good government’.48 Troubridge soon discovered that the people had no faith in the Parthenopean Republic, welcoming the royal revival. The Jacobin experiment would be over once the French retreated.
In Malta, meanwhile, the British government, in order to secure Russian support, had accepted the revival of the Knights of St John by the unstable Tsar Paul, and allowed the Russians to claim a role in the siege. Ball would require all his tact to adopt this new policy without disgusting the Maltese and compromising the siege.49 It was in response to this ministerial volte-face that Nelson famously disparaged the utility of Malta to Britain once Naples was back in friendly hands. The same private letter lamented Spencer’s failure to promote Maurice to the Navy Board.50 Other personal correspondence of the same time shared thoughts about the lack of family rewards with brother William, while noting the death of the youngest brother, drunken Suckling. Fanny was warned not to come out to Sicily; Nelson would return with the Hamiltons once the Bourbons were restored.
Nelson’s protestations that he only remained at Palermo in order to restore the royal regime in Naples, and thereby secure British interests, occur throughout his correspondence and must be taken seriously. The pleadings of the Queen, affecting as they must have been even at seond-hand in Emma’s translation, were as nothing to the strategic imperatives that directed his programme. He was the only man who could energise the Neapolitan cause and rescue the hooligan King from his treacherous subjects, securing the best naval facilities in the Mediterranean for his country.51 Moreover, there were longer-term imperatives: by restoring Ferdinand, Nelson and Hamilton would cement the links with Vienna and drive the French out of the greater part of Italy. Improved conditions for trade would help fund the war, while damaging the prospects of the enemy.
Nelson: Britannia's God of War Page 21