Nelson the Commander
Page 32
But this book cannot leave the matter there: it must in its closing pages answer three questions. First, the consequences momentous and stupendous that flowed from Trafalgar. Second, the qualities that lifted Nelson to such pre-eminence among the world's naval commanders. Third, to what use for good or ill, did the Royal Navy put the legacy that Nelson bequeathed to it in the century and a half after his death?
Trafalgar did not destroy Napoleon's Navy; his Brest fleet remained, and he created a new fleet in Toulon. But in the ten years that elapsed before his final defeat at Waterloo, the Emperor only once contemplated a serious challenge to the Royal Navy's control of the sea. His armies having vanquished Austria at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805, and secured the greater part of Italy in 1806, he invaded Prussia on 7 October of that year, followed by Russia in December with such success that these two countries signed the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807. To the 62 French, Spanish and Dutch ships-of-the-line already at Napoleon's disposal, plus (he hoped) nine Portuguese, this added 25 Russian. He had only to secure Sweden's 11 and Denmark's 18 to have as many as 125, enough, surely, to break the stranglehold of Britain's maritime power. But, as in 1801, the British Government was swift to sense the danger. Early in September, after Copenhagen had been bombarded intermittently for five days by twenty-five ships-of-the line under Admiral James Gambier, the Danes surrendered their entire Fleet.
Thus thwarted of one dream, Napoleon conceived another: he would 'conquer the sea by the power of the land'. By his Continental System he required all the countries of Europe to treat Britain as a pariah dog; their ports were to be closed to British trade, their ships would no longer supply Britain's needs. But Portugal refused to enforce this form of blockade; she had been Britain's ally for too long, and was averse to suffering the economic consequences, especially those involved in closing the great port of Lisbon. And to Lisbon the Royal Navy, using its unchallenged control of the sea, brought an expeditionary force to Portugal's support on 1 August 1808. As safely did it carry the greater part of this force away from Corunna when it was cornered there at the end of the year after General Sir John Moore's ill fated attempt to invade Spain, when that country rebelled against the Continental System and her harsh occupation by a French army. As securely the British Navy landed a new expeditionary force under the future Duke of Wellington at Lisbon in April 1809. And so did Britain's ships keep his men supplied for the three years that they held the lines of Torres Vedras against the French until, in 1811, Wellington had a sufficient force to defeat Massena's occupying army and drive it back into Spain.
During these years the French Navy was not idle. Its guerre de course, conducted by such men as Robert Surcouf, from which merchantmen sailing as close to home as the English Channel were not exempt, was a continuing embarrassment; but its battleships made few sorties of any significance. As soon as December 1805, Rear-Admiral Willaumez slipped out of Brest and was at large in the West Indies and South Atlantic with six sail-of-the-line for as many months, but Rear-Admiral Leissegues, who likewise slipped out with five sail-of-the-line, was caught off San Domingo by Duckworth, now a vice-admiral, on 6 February 1806. And with St Vincent reappointed to command the Channel fleet and to impose his own rigorous blockade of Brest, there were no further excursions until after his final retirement. Not until January 1808 did Allemand escape from Aix Roads with six ships-of-the-line, of which all but one succeeded in joining Ganteaume in Toulon. And because Collingwood considered it more important to blockade Cadiz, as many as ten French ships-of-the-line were able to slip out of Toulon to bring succour to Corfu. But Ganteaume achieved no more than this before, eluding all Collingwood's attempts to intercept him, he returned to Toulon on 10 April. Lastly, in February 1809, Willaumez again slipped out of Brest, this time with eight sail-of-the-line, but only to be driven into Aix Roads by Gambier's watching British force. There, after he had been superseded by Allemand, this squadron was attacked by fireships under Captain Lord Thomas Cochrane on 11 April, and many of its ships destroyed.
But none of these episodes, nor the activities of smaller French squadrons in the West Indies and in the Indian Ocean, notably Charles Decean's tenacious defence of Mauritius, were a serious challenge to the Royal Navy's grip on the seas. This enabled Popham to capture the Cape of Good Hope (1806), and foolishly, to attempt to do likewise with Buenos Aires; Duckworth to force the Dardanelles (1807); Vice-Admiral James Dacres to capture Curacoa (1807); Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew (who was to gain renown and the title of Lord Exmouth for his bombardment of Algiers in 1816) to attack Java (1807); Saumarez, by this time a vice-admiral, to gain command of the Baltic (1808); Strachan with troops under Lieutenant-General the Earl of Chatham (brother of Pitt) to bungle an attempt to destroy Missiessy's fleet at its moorings off Flushing (1809); Hallowell to frustrate Rear-Admiral Baudoin's attempt to relieve Barcelona (1809); Rear-Admiral the Hon. Alexander Cochrane to capture Martinique, Senegal and Cayenne (all in 1809); and Rear-Admiral William Drury to take Amboyna in the Moluccas (1810).
Nor did Britain, whose trade and industry now flourished as it had never done before, fight only Napoleon and his allies. In 1812 she became embroiled in war with the USA, as much over the latter's ambition to obtain possession of Canada as the former's insistence on the right of search and impressment. The erstwhile Colonies had no battle fleet to draw away across the Atlantic more than a tithe of the hard core of the Royal Navy's strength. But Britain's frigates, whose captains had become over-confident from their ability to beat the French, suffered much at the hands of a mere sixteen which were better built and more heavily armed, as well as ably fought by such officers as Commodore John Rodgers and Captain Stephen Decatur. And her maritime trade and fisheries were badly mauled by Yankee privateers before, in 1813, she spared ten sail-of-the-line to impose an effective blockade of America's Atlantic seaboard, and Captain Philip Broke of the Shannon did much to re-establish the Royal Navy's supremacy by his lightning defeat and capture of Captain James Lawrence's Chesapeake off Cape Cod. This, coupled with the failure of the United States' attempt to invade Canada, followed by the capture and destruction of the centre of Washington, DC, and other operations by a British expeditionary force - not all of them so successful - persuaded both powers to negotiate peace in 1814.
All these worldwide operations, and many more, were possible because in the shadow of the overwhelming disaster of Trafalgar, Napoleon and Decrès would not again allow the French battle fleet to risk destruction by the British Navy. Moreover, when he wearied of his inability to subjugate Spain, Napoleon made the fatal mistake of opening a second front; because the Tsar proved an intransigient ally, to the extent of withdrawing from the Continental System, he ordered his Grande Armée to march on Moscow - and to its destruction. And whilst the Emperor was thus engaged, Wellington not only drove into Spain with 80,000 troops plus numerous Spanish guerilla forces, against 250,000 under Massena, Marmont and Soult, but, much assisted by the Royal Navy's support for his advance along that country's Biscay shore, in October 1813 crossed the Pyrenees and invaded southern France.
The sequel to both these campaigns was the Allied occupation of Paris on 31 March 1814, followed by Napoleon's abdication and exile to Elba. His escape and his last journey to St Helena onboard HMS Northumberland after Wellington's triumph at Waterloo, followed in 1815. This humiliating end to one of the greatest of military commander's ambition to gain dominion over all Europe - he died in 1821 - was the awesome consequence that flowed from the decisive supremacy of British sea power, which Nelson, above all, did so much to establish - as Napoleon himself admitted: 'In all my plans I have always been thwarted by the British Fleet.'
The second point raised by Mahan's eulogy recalls words from our first chapter: 'A naval commander's greatness is measured by more than the number and extent of his victories: one must assess the inborn qualities and acquired skills that enabled him to achieve results of such consequence to this country.' And these were listed as ambition, leadership
, an understanding of strategy, tactical skill, and diplomatic ability, plus star quality. 'There is but one Nelson': St Vincent voiced the phrase as a tribute to his unique qualities as a naval commander. Both as a commander-in-chief, and later as a First Lord who knew how much Britain depended upon her Navy to protect her from conquest by Napoleon, St Vincent was only marginally concerned with Nelson the man, for all that he deplored his callous treatment of Fanny and his liaison with Emma. And, if it is to be true to its title, so should this book judge him.
The two years from September 1798, when Nelson reached Naples wearing the laurels of the Nile, until his return to England in November 1800, were an aberration. His ambition was dormant, his leadership faulty, his grasp of strategy inept, his diplomacy both naive and intolerant, and he had only one minor opportunity to display his tactical skill. They were scarred by such episodes as the fiasco of the Neapolitan advance on Rome; by the many months which he spent in 'silken dalliance' at Palermo, leaving the active prosecution of the war at sea in the area under his command, such as the siege of Malta and the Levant blockade, to his subordinates, and to his ally, Ushakov; by his inhuman treatment of Caracciolo and the Neapolitan rebels; and by his flagrant disobedience of Keith's orders.
'The reason why' is abundantly clear. Love is a many-splendoured thing but, as Shakespeare warns us, 'Keep you out of the shot and danger of desire'; or, as Pascal expressed it, 'le coeur a ses raisons que le raison ne connait point'. The historian cannot disregard this, nor pretend other than that it disfigures Nelson's reputation - for all that many turn 'a blind eye' to it. If he had continued to allow Emma to govern him, he would never have gained immortality. But from the time that they severed their link with the Neapolitan Court, he was again true to himself. So, as Tolstoy is acclaimed for War and Peace and Anna Karenina despite his cruelty to his wife and family, and as Wagner is lauded for The Ring and Tristan and Isolde despite his shameless seduction of Cosima Liszt, Nelson is to be judged as a naval commander primarily by his achievements in the four years before (i.e. from the time that Hood first gave him command of a squadron of frigates in 1793 up to and including the Nile), and the five years after his enslavement at Naples and Palermo (i.e. from Copenhagen to Trafalgar).
The driving force which enabled him to scale the heights is very clear. Ambition for honour and glory inspired him to wear out of the line at Cape St Vincent, and to descend like the Assyrian wolf on Brueys' fleet in Aboukir Bay. Then, having achieved fame, he was driven on - in the Baltic, off Toulon, across the Atlantic and back again to Cape Trafalgar - by ambition of a purer kind, to do his duty. The vanity of his later years was not only an inevitable by-product of his initial ambition,but is not to be taken too seriously. It was always more evident to strangers and in his prolific correspondence than when in the company of his friends and brother officers. And how much better this than the folie de grandeur which afflicted Napoleon who, for all his undoubted greatness, not only as a military commander but as a ruler who effected so many reforms including the legal code that survives to this day, drove him over the abyss to Moscow, Elba, Waterloo and St Helena.
The evidence that Nelson was not only an outstanding leader but had star quality - that, indeed, no star has yet shone brighter - is so over-whelming that it needs no pointing, except only to stress that his leadership was of that uncommon kind by which his officers and men loved him instead of, as with Wellington and Napoleon, being dominated by fear of his wrath. Certain apparent defects must however be mentioned; his mercurial, self-critical nature, his tendency to dramatize events and to indulge in flights of fantasy, his pessimism and his hypochondria. But these were the price he paid for his creative talent: he suffered the tortures of the artistic temperament when denied the opportunity to exercise this. Moreover, as with his vanity, his faults were revealed chiefly in his letters which were as much a safety valve for his emotions as other men's diaries. (Lord Alanbrooke's are a notable example from the Second World War.) He was seldom seen to be vain, either by those who served with him or by those who met him ashore: on the contrary, he was the best of mess-mates and stimulating company.
Nelson's pursuit of Brueys, his urge to press on to Reval, his chase after Villeneuve, and his blockades of Toulon and of Cadiz - both designed to encourage the enemy to sortie and so be brought to action - plus the importance which he attached to annihilating the enemy, all these are abundant evidence of an exceptional understanding of naval strategy. The restraint which he showed towards the Tsar's negotiators, in sharp contrast with his firm handling of the Danes after Copenhagen, are but two examples among many of his skilful diplomacy. Nor should it be forgotten that, though Nelson did not live to show how well - or ill - he might have filled the office of First Lord, he displayed during his long watch off Toulon a gift for administration such as is seldom possessed by men of imagination, a combination which did much to enable such commanders as Caesar and Napoleon to achieve immortal fame.
All this would entitle Nelson to be ranked among Britain's more distinguished admirals, just as Lord Fisher was to be for his great reforms a century later. But it is not enough to rank him among Britain's sea kings. A commander's prime task in war is to defeat the enemy in battle. By this, above all, is Nelson to be judged; and of the verdict there can be 'no manner of doubt whatever'. By his single-minded determination, not just to defeat the enemy to the limited extent that other admirals, even Jervis at Cape St Vincent, had been content to do, but 'to annihilate', coupled with the use of novel tactics of his own devising instead of those formulated by others in the Fighting Instructions, and a clear comprehension of the value of time - 'Five minutes may make the difference between victory and defeat' (Cf. Napoleon's dictum: 'Ask me for anything but time.') - by these he scored not one but three overwhelming triumphs. And no other naval commander before or since has achieved so much.
But what of the other side of the coin, his defeats at Santa Cruz and Boulogne? Is his rashness on both these occasions to be counted against him? On the contrary, he was the victim of a vital quality without which he would not have worn the Captain out of the line at Cape St Vincent, nor surprised Brueys by a night attack in Aboukir Bay; he would have hesitated, as Hyde Parker did, to tackle the hazards of the approaches to Copenhagen, and to engage Villeneuve's superior force off Cape Trafalgar without allowing his fleet time to form up in accordance with his Trafalgar memorandum. As Field-Marshal Montgomery has expressed it:
'There are three types of commanders in the higher grades:
1. Those who have faith and inspiration, but who lack the infinite capacity for taking pains and preparing for every foreseeable contingency which is the foundation of all success in war. These fail.
2. Those who possess the last-named quality to a degree amounting to genius. Of this type I would name Wellington as the perfect example.
3. Those who, possessing this quality, are inspired by a faith and conviction which enables them, when they have done everything possible in the way of preparation, and when the situation favours boldness, to throw their bonnet over the moon.
There are moments in war when to win all, one has to do this. . . . Nelson was the perfect example. No commander ever took greater care . . . to prepare against every possible contingency. But no one was ever so well able to recognize the moment when, everything having been done that reason can dictate, something must be left to chance - to faith.' (In a lecture to the Royal United Service Institution, printed in its Journal for August 1970.)
The third point from Mahan's tribute is that with which this final chapter is titled; Nelson left a legacy not only to the British Navy but to the Fleets of all nations.
The lessons to be learned from his career being so clear, nothing is more extraordinary than the extent to which they were distorted or, worse, rejected in the century that followed his death. The Napoleonic wars were no sooner over than the Admiralty issued new Fighting Instructions which, instead of recognizing the value of the Nelson Touch, re-imposed the o
ld rigid tactics. Future battles were to be fought as a gun duel in a single line ahead parallel to that of the enemy, despite all the experience which had so clearly shown that this was unlikely to achieve more than a marginal victory. It was safer that way. And with the exception of Admiral Sir William May who, when Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet in 1910-11, exercised 'divided tactics', which were comparable with Nelson's two columns at Trafalgar, no British admiral departed from this dogma despite the flexibility gained from the introduction of steam.
As important, through the century of the pax Britannica, in which the Royal Navy was required to do little more than police the oceans of the world and help to establish the rule of law throughout the British Empire, the spirit of initiative which Nelson encouraged in his subordinates was transmuted to the baser metal of unthinking obedience, as was disastrously exemplified when Admiral Tryon met his death in the collision between the Victoria and the Camperdown in 1893. Thirdly, in the years that he was First Sea Lord and engaged in the task of transforming the Royal Navy's somnolent Victorian fleet into the fighting machine needed to meet Germany's threat to seize Britannia's trident, Fisher split its Band of Brothers into two rival camps by his vicious campaign against Lord Charles Beresford.
Nor was this Fisher's only mistake. To his First Lord, Winston Churchill, he wrote in 1911: