Leaving the Leander, Captain Thomas Thompson, and the Mutine to wait for forty-eight hours, in the hope that the frigates might have thought better of returning to Gibraltar, Nelson delayed no longer in his pursuit of Brueys. Knowing only that the French had passed southwards between Corsica and the Italian mainland, he set course for Naples to gain news of their destination. As he rounded Cape Corse on the twelfth he made his intentions clear; first to St Vincent: 'You may be assured I will fight them [Brueys' fleet] the moment I can reach them, be they at anchor or under sail.' In the latter event he intended to divide his fleet into three squadrons; he himself would have six ships, Saumarez and Troubridge four each. 'Two of these squadrons were to attack the [enemy] ships of war,' wrote Berry, 'while the third was to pursue the transports and sink and destroy as many as it could.' This is of interest in showing that Nelson was willing to engage thirteen French ships-of-the-line with only ten of his own, so that the rest might wreak havoc among Bonaparte's troop transports. But of greater import Nelson also wrote to Sir William Hamilton: 'If their fleet is not moored in as strong a port as Toulon, nothing shall hinder me from attacking them.' For the moment, however, he could do no more than follow the course which he believed Brueys had taken.
The 14 June brought confirmation that he was on the right track: a Tunisian cruiser reported having seen the French convoy off the western end of Sicily on the 4th, steering eastward. 'If they pass Sicily,' Nelson wrote next day to Spencer, who had suggested that the armada might be destined for Portugal, or even for Ireland, (2) 'I shall believe they are going on their scheme of possessing Alexandria, and getting troops to India.' Three days later the British fleet hove-to off Naples, so that Troubridge could bring replies to letters which Nelson had written to Hamilton and Acton, warning the Neapolitan Government that Sicily was threatened, and seeking supplies for his ships, frigates to act as lookouts, and pilots in Sicilian waters. He learned that he could expect no more than the first of these: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies feared the French too much to breach their neutrality, nor would they give 'the smallest information of what was, or was likely to be, the future destination of the French Armament'. But Troubridge provided more helpful news: from private inquiries he gathered that the French were about to attack Malta.
Nelson immediately set course for the Straits of Messina which were passed on the 20th. On the 22nd, off Cape Passaro, two French frigates were seen, but Nelson could not spare any of his ships to chase them. A little later, he spoke with a Genoese brig which had left Malta the day before: the island had surrendered on the 15th, and next day the Armée d'Orient had sailed for Sicily. This intelligence was substantially but not wholly correct. The Knights Hospitallers of St John the Baptist, who had moved first from Jerusalem to Rhodes, then in 1522 to Malta, to build the great fortified cities of Valletta, Senglea and Floriana on both sides of Grand Harbour, had changed much since the Great Siege of 1565 when, for four long months, they successfully resisted a fierce attack by the Turks. Luxurious living, intrigues and quarrels had eroded the Christian fervour and military discipline upon which their strength depended. The people, who had once made them so welcome, now sought relief from rule by despotic Grand Masters.
When Bonaparte appeared off Malta on 9 June 1798, he asked only if his fleet might water in Valletta harbour, to which Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch answered: 'No more than four armed vessels should ever be admitted at once.' Bonaparte's irritation at this strictly neutral reply was fermented into anger by the interception of a small vessel found to be carrying a letter from Tsar Paul to the effect that Russia would be glad to take Malta under its protection. This determined him to lay siege to the island. But none was needed: the people were in no mood to resist the French troops when they landed on the l0th. And it needed only twenty-four hours for the effete von Hompesch to ask for an armistice rather than have the 'impregnable' fortress of Valletta bombarded into submission. Articles of capitulation having been signed on 12 June, Bonaparte set up his headquarters in the building that is now Malta's General Post Office, to stay for six busy days reorganizing the island's administration and economy as a French dependency, before he sailed again on 19 June, with his Armée d'Orient depleted by a garrison of 4,000 troops.
Nelson reacted to the news which he gleaned from the Genoese brig by calling Saumarez, Troubridge, Ball, and Captain Henry Darby of the Bellerophon to join him and Berry onboard the Vanguard. To all five captains he posed the question, do you think we had better stand for Malta, steer for Sicily or push on to Alexandria? Saumarez gave his opinion in writing, from which may be seen how one inaccuracy in the intercepted intelligence, that the French were bound for Sicily, was offset by another, that Bonaparte had left Malta as early as the 16th:
'The French fleet having left Malta six days ago, had their destination been the island of Sicily, there is reason to presume we should have obtained information of it yesterday off Syracuse, or the day before coming through the Pharo of Messina. Under all circumstances I think it most conducive to the good of His Majesty's service to make the best of our way for Alexandria, as the only means of saving our possessions in India should the French Armament be destined for that country.'
The others were in agreement. So was Nelson: no destination to the west of Malta was practicable for such a large armada when the prevailing wind was from that direction. The French must be heading to the east, perhaps intending to capture Corfu, perhaps to overthrow the Government of Turkey. But an attack on Egypt was the greatest menace to British interests: 'If they have concerted a plan with Tipu Sahib (3) to have vessels at Suez, three weeks at this season is a common passage to the Malabar coast, when our India possessions would be in great danger.'
Having thus decided Bonaparte's destination from the slenderest of clues, Nelson did not hesitate to follow his strategic insight: he ordered his fleet to crowd on all sail and steer for Alexandria.
'The only objection I can fancy [being] started is, ''you should not have gone sail a long voyage without more certain information''. . . . My answer is ready, who was I to get it from? The Government of Naples or Sicily either knew not or chose to keep me in ignorance. Was I to wait patiently till I heard certain accounts if Egypt was their object? Before I could hear of them they would have been in India. To do nothing was I felt disgraceful; therefore I made use of my understanding and by it I ought to stand or fall.'
With these words, and the resolution with which they were followed through, Nelson was to do much more than efface his failure at Santa Cruz, though the stump of his right arm would always remind him how rash he had been on that occasion.
'Some days must now elapse [wrote Saumarez] before we can be relieved of our cruel suspense, and if at the end of our journey we find we are upon a wrong scent, our embarrassment will be great indeed. Fortunately, I only act here en second; but did the chief responsibility rest with me, I fear it would be more than my too irritable nerves could bear.'
Nelson carried this responsibility for the next five weeks. Brueys had a three-day start but, with a force so much larger than Nelson's, his progress was slower. On the night of 22 June the two fleets passed close to each other - but without making the contact that would have enabled Nelson to engage Brueys and prevent the Armée d'Orient reaching its destination. And when dawn came on the 23rd they were beyond sight of each other because they were steering diverging courses; Bonaparte had ordered Brueys to steer first for Crete instead of for Alexandria in order to mislead any merchantmen they passed.
For this reason Nelson reached the Egyptian port on 28 June to find that his insight had, seemingly, been wrong. Having started in pursuit of Brueys with a three weeks' handicap (counting from Bonaparte's departure from Toulon on 19 May to Troubridge's juncture on 7 June) and supposing that he had left the vicinity of Malta six days (instead of only three) after the French, he did not realize that he might have out-stripped them. In part because the British Consul was absent from his post, leaving no one to negotiate
with the Turkish Governor for the British fleet to be allowed to remain and take in supplies; in part because, according to Berry, Nelson's 'active and anxious mind would not permit him to rest a moment in the same place, he . . . shaped his course to the northward, for the coast of [Turkey] to reach . . . some quarter where information [of the French] could probably be obtained.' He was not, therefore, off Alexandria to hinder the arrival of the French just three days later, when the Armée d'Orient was disembarked at Marabout, four miles to the west.
By then Nelson was beating back to the southern shore of Crete, where he learned that the French were not at Corfu. Fearful that Sicily had been their destination after all, he took his fleet all the way back to Syracuse on 19 July, 'a round of near 600 leagues . . . as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as I was 27 days ago', with, as he wrote to Hamilton, 'no frigates, to which has been, and may be again, attributed the loss of the French fleet'. Nelson's anguish at the apparent failure of his pursuit was likewise expressed in a letter written to Troubridge several years later: 'Do not fret at anything. I wish I never had, but my return to Syracuse in 1798 broke my heart.' Yet, his resolution did not fail him: when he gained no news from the Two Sicilies, he was satisfied that the French must be somewhere in the Levant. As soon as he had persuaded the Governor to provision and water his ships, he sailed again to the east, on 24 July. 'Every moment I have to regret the frigates having left me,' he told St Vincent, '. . . but if they [Brueys' fleet] are above water, I will find them out, and if possible bring them to battle.'
By this time Bonaparte's army had marched south to Cairo, 150 miles across a waterless desert at the hottest season of the year. Attacked on 13 July by Murad Bey's Mameluke cavalry he defeated them at Shubrakhit. Within sight of the pyramids of Giza on the 21st, he routed a much larger Mameluke force. Two days later he entered the Egyptian capital in triumph. Nine more, and disaster struck - at sea. The news reached Bonaparte from an eye-witness, his Controller-General of Finances, E. Poussielgue, who chanced to be at Rosetta on the night of 1 August. Brueys had received no orders after Bonaparte's departure from Alexandria except that the French fleet should wait off Egypt, instead of returning to the security of Toulon. Considering the entrance to Alexandria harbour (the old eastern one, now silted up) too narrow for his larger ships-of-the-line, he had moved fifteen miles to the east, to Aboukir Bay. There he anchored on 8 July under the shelter of Aboukir Island. On hearing this, Bonaparte sent word that he should return to Alexandria, where he would be protected by the guns of the citadel. Although this order never reached the French Admiral, he was thinking of moving on his own initiative, when, on the 28th, three British frigates (sent by St Vincent to rejoin Nelson as soon as they returned to Gibraltar, but still seeking him) appeared to seaward. Even so, Brueys did not suppose that these presaged the arrival of a British battle fleet; he stayed at his chosen anchorage.
Nelson was, by this time, back off the Greek peninsula, and there, on 28 July, Troubridge gleaned the news his Admiral needed; that the French armada had been sighted four weeks before steering south-east. Confirmed by a passing vessel later in the day, this intelligence was enough for Nelson to head south under all sail. At 10 am on 1 August the Alexander and Swiftsure, which he had sent on ahead, sighted Alexandria and reported that the French flag was flying over the city but, to Nelson's disappointment, that the only ships in the harbour were Bonaparte's transports. Three hours later, however, all his anxieties were ended: at 1 pm the masthead lookout in the Zealous, which was leading the British force, sighted Brueys' fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson instantly hauled up to a brisk breeze from the north-north-west, and headed eastwards. Then, after many anxious days during which he never spared himself, seldom sleeping and eating little food, he sat down to a good dinner. As one eyewitness put it: 'The utmost joy seemed to animate every breast on board . . . and the pleasure which the Admiral himself felt was perhaps more heightened than that of any other man, as he had now a certainty by which he could regulate his future operations.'
Nelson had proved his strategic insight: could he now show as much tactical skill? Ambition and faith inspired this prophetic answer, as they had done off Cape St Vincent: 'Before this time tomorrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey'.
While both fleets counted the same number of ships-of-the-line, Brueys had the advantage of four which were more heavily armed; and to offset the 50-gunned Leander, a ship 'below the line', he had four frigates of which two carried as many as forty guns. Secondly, that Nelson all but annihilated his enemy, only two French ships-of-the-line and two frigates escaping capture or destruction, whereas no British ship was lost. How, then, did he gain such a resounding victory?
Aboukir Bay, whose sandy shores has changed little since Nelson’s time, is a semi-circular indentation, some sixteen miles across, immediately to the west of the Rosetta mouth of the river that was to give its name to the coming battle. The small town near Aboukir Point at the western end of the bay, and Aboukir Island were both held and fortified by the French. The latter formed part of a chain of rocks and shoals that extended three miles to the north-east, forming a natural breakwater under whose lee Brueys berthed his ships. To afford the best defence against attack they were anchored in line of battle, slightly bowed to seawards, 160 yards apart. They were ordered to lay out an additional anchor to the south-south-east, as well as putting a spring in their main cable, so that they might readily bring their broadsides to bear. But for want of an accurate chart Brueys anchored the Guerrier, in the van (windward end) of his line, as much as 1,000 yards from the Aboukir shoals; and because he supposed that an enemy would have as much respect for this navigational hazard, he thought that the brunt of any attack would fall on his centre and rear, in which, therefore, he placed his more heavily armed ships.
Since there was no port in Egypt with fortifications comparable with those of Toulon, where a fleet could lie secure from attack, Nelson had already discussed with his captains how he would deal with Brueys' ships if, as seemed likely, he found them lying in some open anchorage. His fleet would concentrate first on a part of the French line, if possible engaging them on both sides. His ships must hold fire until they were within point-blank range; and the sooner they closed to much less than 400 yards the better. For he would not be content if a few of the enemy struck their colours whilst the rest escaped.
There was, therefore, no need for Nelson to call Saumarez, Troubridge and the others on board the Vanguard as the British fleet headed for Aboukir Bay. As he wrote afterwards to Lord Howe: 'By attacking the enemy's van and centre, the wind blowing directly along [their] line, I was enabled to throw what force I pleased on a few ships. This plan my friends readily conceived by the signals.' At 3 pm he hoisted, 'Prepare for battle'; at 4, 'Be ready to anchor by the stern', so that they could maintain a southerly heading instead of swinging round to the north-north-westerly wind; then, 'Form line of battle', ahead and astern of the Vanguard. Most important of all, Nelson signalled his intention to concentrate on the enemy's van and centre - because, in the prevailing wind, these could not easily be reinforced by their rear. By the time all this was done it was 5.30 and the British fleet was nearly abreast of Aboukir Island, approaching the bay from the north-west.
Brueys first sighted Nelson's ships at 2 pm. An hour later he ordered his own to prepare for battle. He also signalled his two brigs to lure the advancing enemy on to the Aboukir shoals. 'The bait,' says a French authority, 'was a clumsy one to put before a man like Nelson', whose van ignored it. At 4 the French Admiral showed symptoms of indecision: first he ordered his ships to cross topgallant yards, then concluded that the enemy would not risk an attack during the approaching hours of darkness and abandoned further preparations for getting under way.
Soon after 5.30 pm, Nelson hailed the Zealous, near the head of his line. No one in the British fleet knew Aboukir Bay, nor had they trustworthy charts. Did her captain, Samuel Hood think there was enough water to pass between the Guerri
er and the nearest shoal? Hood answered: 'I don't know, sir, but with your permission I will stand in and try.' When Nelson readily agreed, the Zealous, supported to port by Thomas Foley's Goliath, bore up and, sounding all the way, successfully rounded the head of Brueys' line. So that he might watch this, Nelson ordered the Vanguard to heave to, with the result that several ships passed ahead of her: when the flagship stood on again at 6 pm, the British fleet was in order except that the Alexander and Swiftsure had not yet rejoined from their reconnaissance of Alexandria, and the Culloden, with a prize in tow, was lying some distance astern of the remainder.
Twenty minutes later the battle began. As soon as the Goliath and Zealous came within range of the Conquerant and Guerrier, the French ships opened fire. So, too, did the battery on Aboukir Island, but without effect. Foley held his broadside until the Goliath passed close across the Guerrier's bows, when he raked her at point-blank range. He then tried to anchor on her port bow, but ran on too far, bringing up on the Conquerant's port quarter, where he was in action with her and with the frigate Serieuse. The Guerrier was not, however, left without an opponent: Hood anchored the Zealous off her port bow and, as the summer sun set over the wide bay, brought down her foremast with a well-directed broadside. Saumarez conned the Orion to starboard of the Zealous and Goliath; poured his starboard broadside into the Serieuse, dismasting her, cutting her cable and reducing her to a sinking wreck; then anchored abeam of the Peuple Souverain, though at a greater distance than he intended. Davidge Gould cut between the Guerrier and Conquerant, to anchor the Audacious less than fifty yards from the latter's port bow. Ralph Miller took the Theseus between the Zealous and the Guerrier, then between the Goliath and Conquerant, to anchor his ship 300 yards on the Spartiate's port beam.
Nelson the Commander Page 14