Breaking the Line

by David Donachie

  Nelson could not recall ever having been so happy. It was as if he had changed places with some other man, so different were his feelings about everything: his duties, the problems of the Mediterranean command, his relations with his commander-in-chief, the Admiralty and government at home.

  Ashore it was the same, with everyone accepting quickly the status of the pair. It was just taken for granted that they were lovers and that Sir William knew it. Throughout January, Nelson was struck not by the change in people but by the lack of it. The Queen was just as effusive in his presence, insisting that he was the only one who could restore her to her rightful station. The King noticed little that did not relate to his own concerns.

  As a full member of Sir William’s household, Nelson learned to relax. He entertained in the company of the Hamiltons as though he was as much the host as they, and watched as Emma played cards well into the night, at which she won and lost prodigious sums that he had either to lend or hold for her.

  While still eager to defeat the enemy he knew that he had done, for the moment, all that he could do: without soldiers he could not recapture either Naples or Malta. His cruisers, British, Portuguese and a few loyal Neapolitans, were at sea, ensuring that the shipping lanes were covered to strangle French trade, and that any French warship that ventured out would therefore meet a force large enough to destroy it.

  At night, he and Emma retired to bed where, to his delight, her passion increased. He could not and would not explain to her how her ardour pleased him. As a shy man, to have the burden of initiation removed was bliss. He had always been easily rebuffed, especially by Fanny. That was never the case with Emma.

  For Emma, marriage to Sir William had entailed duties, pleasant enough but rooted in a degree of practicality, but with Nelson she could recall the excitements of her youth. She could not get enough of him: his company, his gentle wit, his forgiving nature – for she knew that she sometimes overstepped the bounds of good taste – his naked presence.

  Like any lovers, a great deal of their conversation was inconsequential, yet physical. Familiarity brought with it an intimacy of mind, the beginnings of a private language, an awareness of desires unfulfilled, not least Nelson’s to be a father. Emma did not make an issue of her craving to oblige that, but after six weeks of close company, Nelson knew that she had abandoned all attempts to avoid a pregnancy.

  Emma was thrilled that when she talked he listened to her. Nelson, the most powerful man in the Mediterranean, lionised by his fellow countrymen and foreigners alike, from the lowest to the highest, discussed his most pressing concerns with her. The Queen – who had lost most of her power to her husband and ministers who seemed to blame her for the loss of Naples – had come to depend on Emma more than ever. Now she acted as a conduit between Nelson and Maria Carolina to ensure that Nelson knew of every stratagem hatched by Ferdinand and de Gallo.

  Gifts and praise poured in from foreign courts. Disappointed that his request to London regarding recognition of Emma’s services had been ignored, Nelson was delighted when the Tsar of Russia bestowed on her the Order of St Catherine. This came with a jewelled cross that Maria Carolina pronounced a sad affair: to prove her own attachment to Emma, she had it reset with precious gems, and Emma wore it at her neck with pride.

  On her advice, Nelson, despite initial unease, had taken to wearing his Chelenk in his hat. The plume of triumph glittered mightily in the Sicilian sun, and gave him an exotic air to go with his surroundings.

  Emma was Cleopatra to everyone in the fleet, most happy, others less so. Some were furious, even if they were well disposed to her, convinced that the association would tarnish Nelson’s reputation. Yet another group cared nothing for that reputation, or for Emma, and letters winged their way back to England, to become part of a tale that would not rebound to the credit of the man who had thumped the French.

  For Emma and Sir William trouble emerged with the sudden arrival of a Mr Charles Lock and his wife, Cecilia, daughter of the well-connected Duchess of Leinster. Without much wealth, Charles Lock was a man in a hurry who made no secret that he had designs on Sir William’s position as ambassador, a natural step up from his present appointment as Consul General to the Court of Naples. But natural only if Sir William retired, on which he was rumoured to be keen. Emma knew how her husband wavered, depending on his increasingly volatile moods. One minute he would proclaim his intention to stay in harness till the Grim Reaper took him, the next that if Naples ever again became a place of peace he would live out his life there in retirement. At other times he would damn Italy and all its works, then declare that he would go home to England within the month.

  Good manners forced Sir William to accommodate Lock, along with his wife, two children and dog. As a guest in the house Lock picked up on his host’s indecision, and interrogated the servants for their views. The vagaries of this left him in an agony of frustration, which manifested itself in attempts at irony so inept that Emma found him tiresome. Less diplomatic than her husband, she made it very plain that she did not like him.

  The wife was sweet-natured enough, but rather feeble and prone to faint at the sight of blood. An envoy arrived from the Sultan and, on seeing Nelson’s Chelenk, immediately prostrated himself, as was the custom at the court to which he belonged. A gross, ugly fellow he was subsequently persuaded by a flirtatious Emma that rum was not barred by his religion. In his cups he claimed to have cut off the heads of twenty Frenchmen with one blow, a feat so impossible as to be humorous. Encouraged by a laughing Emma, the weapon was produced, stained with dried blood, and Cecilia fainted when Emma, to the delight of the Turk, kissed it.

  What to Emma had been a jest became, in the letters penned by Charles Lock that night, a sybaritic rite, one in which the evil Emma Hamilton, not content with an outrageous attempt to seduce the Mussulman, had communed with powers no decent Christian could abide. He also added that Lord Nelson seemed under the spell of this depraved creature, and that Sir William was an old, doddering fool, well past the labours required of his office.

  Surveying his handiwork, Lock could take comfort in a good hour’s work. No harm could be done to his prospects by tarnishing, at home, reputations that shone in the Mediterranean. And he could rely on his correspondents to share with all they met what they read from a good and trusted friend.

  3

  The arrival in early spring of two regiments of British soldiers took Sicily by surprise. Nelson had their commander parade them through Palermo, the men marching crisply in their bright red coats to show the populace the look of proper soldiers. He ordered them to garrison at Messina, the port and city nearest the Italian mainland, where the French would most likely seek to land, should they have the strength.

  That looked increasingly unlikely. For all that Nelson thought Cardinal Ruffo ‘a swelled up priest’, the prelate was proving effective, commanding an army that now numbered some seventeen thousand. Ragged and disorganised they might be, but such a host struck terror into the hearts of the Republican sympathisers who had taken over the towns and cities of Ferdinand’s domains. It was also an army that the French, much weaker in numbers, declined to meet in open combat, so it became a war of thrust and parry.

  The whole of southern Italy was blood-soaked – little quarter was given by either side. The Army of the Holy Faith would take a Republican stronghold and exact horrendous revenge on those suspected of Jacobinism. Mass rape was common, as were hangings, quarterings, crucifixions, beheadings and burning, all the terrors of ancient sack. If they took those towns back, the French army then inflicted even worse punishment on those loyal to the King, leaving behind a desert devoid of human life. Needless to say, any Frenchman caught by the insurgents suffered a fate that rendered death a welcome release.

  Elsewhere, the effects of Nelson’s Nile victory were beginning to be felt. The Russians and the Turks had taken Corfu and were now masters of the Adriatic. In northern Italy Austria had moved, and the armies of the Emperor were inflicting
defeats where Bonaparte had routed them three years previously. The Russians crossed from Corfu to Italy to support Ruffo, which made his army even more formidable, squeezing the beleaguered enemy back into a shrinking pocket of possession.

  Troubridge sailed for Naples to take command there, immediately sending back news that all the islands off Naples had surrendered to the King. He also informed Nelson that he had several dozen prisoners who, it was claimed, were traitors, and added a request for Neapolitan judges to try them. Nelson obliged him, but later regretted it, given the nature of the justice meted out.

  Trials were held at which the accused were neither represented nor present, where ‘witnesses’ could speak against the supposed traitors without the truth of their statements being checked. Troubridge was ordered to arrange hangings that he declined to undertake, suspecting that a great number of old scores were being settled under the guise of royal retribution. It had ended with Troubridge turfing the ‘judges’ off his ship, and refusing to be party to such a sham affair.

  ‘Doubtless there is much to be desired in the way these matters are handled,’ Sir William commented, on reading Troubridge’s latest despatch, ‘but I do think we must look to our primary aim.’ That, he and Nelson had long agreed, was to get the King and Queen back to Naples. ‘Not just to Naples,’ Sir William insisted, ‘but to a place in which they will be secure and the body politic stable enough to support the interests of Britain’s policy.’

  Sir William, Nelson noted, was in a positive mood, forceful in his opinions and clear as to his ambassadorial objectives. The evening before, at dinner, he had been distracted and feeble. ‘You do not hold then with Cardinal Ruffo’s suggestion of an amnesty?’ Nelson asked.

  Ruffo had written to the King to insist that the simplest way to retake Naples was to offer those who had espoused the Republican cause a pardon for their sins. His aim was to avoid a bloodbath. Edigio Bagio, the leader of the lazzaroni, claimed to have enough followers to cleanse the city. What Ruffo saw in this was a variation of the Terror that had gripped France: peasants would kill anyone of gentle birth, regardless of their allegiances, just as they had in the interregnum between Ferdinand’s flight and the arrival of the French in Naples.

  ‘Only a committed Papist believes in redemption through forgiveness,’ said Sir William. ‘I have rarely known a single blackguard change his ways through absolution.’

  ‘Ruffo is a Catholic,’ observed Nelson.

  ‘He is also a cardinal, Nelson, not a simple priest, and should know better. Can we really hope that those who plotted against their King will settle for a restoration? They will not. They will plot and plan for their damned republic as they did in the past, treating again with our enemies, undermining the state, merely waiting for another opportunity to rebel – this time with more success in the article of regicide. We cannot always have a fleet in Naples Bay. Therefore we must root out the need.’

  ‘And Troubridge’s reservations about justice?’ asked Nelson.

  ‘Let the Neapolitans worry about the justness of what they do.’

  Less formal discussions with Emma produced much the same response. She had passed through Paris in ’89 and seen how the mobs controlled the streets, how they had been manipulated by clever men, who finally got the heads of their anointed sovereigns. For Emma the loyalty was personal as much as political: she was a partisan of the Queen, a friend to her children.

  Nelson disliked treachery, and the society which Ferdinand and Maria Carolina had ruled was rampant with it. Many of the rebels had fawned upon their king and queen, had taken everything that royal generosity could bestow, only to turn on their benefactors for personal advantage. Officers of the army and the marine had sworn a personal oath to their sovereign only to break it. It was easy for him to understand the prevailing mood of the court, which was anticipation of a bloody revenge.

  Ferdinand would not hear of an amnesty, waving an imaginary blade to lop off endless traitorous heads. If the judges he had sent Troubridge were hanging renegades, the only question arising for the King was this: were they doing it fast enough? Yet when it was mooted to him that he should return soon to Naples to oversee the recapture of the city, he fell silent.

  Then news came from Troubridge that the French had abandoned Naples, leaving only a garrison at the most potent fortress, St Elmo. Almost simultaneously Nelson learned that a French fleet of nineteen sail-of-the-line had broken out from Brest, their supposed destination the Mediterranean, and the period of repose came to an abrupt end. The time had come to get back to sea.

  What frigates Nelson had were sent to range far and wide, to look for the approach of the enemy. Despatches were sent to Cadiz to tell Earl St Vincent that he felt confident if the French did come he could defeat them. Meanwhile, shifting his flag to HMS Foudroyant, he would take station off Naples. Would the King take command?

  It was left to the Marquis de Gallo to inform Sir William and Lord Nelson that the King’s Council felt it imprudent to risk Ferdinand’s person, on which so many hopes were based, aboard a ship that might well see action. The reptilian de Gallo was as much a realist as Sir William Hamilton. He knew that it was in Britannia’s interests to retake the city, which would be risky, even given Cardinal Ruffo’s successes. The forts covering the bay were held by committed Republicans. Let Nelson succeed and Ferdinand would reap the reward. If he failed, the King would be absolved of blame.

  ‘Of course His Majesty is conscious of what you do, Lord Nelson, and wishes you to know that he has complete faith in your abilities. Therefore he wishes to appoint you his personal representative.’

  Nelson sailed with full powers to make peace or war, and to hang whomsoever he chose.

  HMS Foudroyant, a dry, weatherly vessel, in much better condition than the battered Vanguard, led the fleet into the Bay of Naples. Nelson had aboard Hardy as his flag captain, Tyson, several officers and midshipmen, as well as Sir William and Lady Hamilton as interpreters. In the first week of June, the scene sparkled. Emma could believe, as she stood on the poop looking at the city, that it was as she had always known it. But the huge tricolour flying above Fort St Elmo disabused her of that idea; that and the gimcrack flag of what the rebels called the Parthenopean Republic flapping everywhere else.

  The bay was full of boats, but only one took the eye, a splendid barge canopied in red, bearing a great white flag with a golden cross. There could be no doubt of whom it carried, and soon Nelson made out the arrogant figure of Cardinal Ruffo, sitting on what looked remarkably like a throne.

  ‘I think we had best give our swelled-up priest a C-in-C’s salute, Hardy. Thirteen guns, if you please.’

  Sir William, standing next to Nelson, nodded sagely, knowing that it was wise to flatter Ruffo. The guns banged out, and Nelson imagined he could see Ruffo tallying them off on his fingers. The cardinal was piped aboard with all due ceremony, with smiles and greetings being exchanged. That mood was shattered by Ruffo’s declaration that he had arranged a truce with the rebels.

  ‘Then you must repudiate it,’ said Nelson. ‘You do not have the authority.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Ruffo replied sententiously. ‘I have given my word.’

  ‘Your cabin,’ said Sir William, quietly, the maindeck of a ship being no place for such a discussion.

  In fact, it was a full-blown argument, made worse when Ruffo outlined the generous terms he had granted the insurgents. These rebels were to be allowed two alternatives: they could return to their homes, as if nothing had happened, unmolested, and the King would ensure they remained so; in return they would swear once more to uphold the monarchy and abide by the laws of an autocratic state. Or they could take ship into exile, carrying with them all their portable property.

  Nelson argued for several hours through Sir William, but he let the Ambassador point out the flaws in Ruffo’s proposals: that Ferdinand would never agree to it, that Nelson, his representative could not approve it, and that the only reason the rebels were surrender
ing was because they lacked the force, without a French garrison, to do anything else. When Sir William tired, Emma took over, but there was no shifting the priest: his honour and word were pledged, and his principles of forgiveness invoked.

  The way Ruffo talked it seemed as if the rebels were merely errant children instead of treacherous opportunists. He could not grasp that if they had taken the King and Queen they would probably have executed them, along with their grown-up children. Nelson preferred not to think about the infant child of the Hereditary Prince. No sensible sovereign, let alone a half-mad one, could live with such a threat hanging over his head.

  ‘Tell the cardinal,’ said an exasperated Nelson for the tenth time, ‘that a few lopped-off heads will solve the business much quicker than all the overtures he makes.’

  But Ruffo argued on, forcing Nelson to accept that the matter should be passed back to the King and his council to decide, and obliging him to accept that the truce was valid.

  ‘I know his game,’ Nelson opined, as the cardinal was seen into his barge. ‘He hopes for a fait accompli.’

  ‘Who is to say, Nelson,’ said a restored Sir William, ‘that he does not know his sovereign better than you or I?’

  As expected Ruffo’s amnesty was repudiated by the King, which put those who had accepted it in an impossible bind. The forts were no longer fully manned, for a goodly number of the defenders had sneaked out to their own homes. Faced with Ruffo’s army and Nelson’s fleet, those left had no option but to surrender. What followed was the full bloody revenge of the counter-revolution that Ferdinand had prophesied. Men who thought they had surrendered with the honours of war were imprisoned in disease-filled hulks or in the dank, rat infested dungeons of the fortresses they had so recently controlled.