Nelson

by John Sugden

  Nelson felt that an attack ought to be made quickly, before the French could regroup and strengthen their defences. Over the next three days he renewed his efforts to disrupt enemy preparations. He found them building a new half-moon battery near a lagoon south of the town, hoping to prevent the British landing there, and sent its gunners scurrying from the works with a few well-directed shots. Nelson’s confidence was tip-top. ‘I wish the troops were here,’ he told Hood. ‘I am sure in its present state it [Bastia] will soon fall.’ He drew the admiral’s attention to a landing place three miles north of the town. To Udny he even recklessly admitted ‘if I had five hundred troops, by laying my ship and frigate for two hours against the works, I am certain of taking it.’19

  On the 23rd, the day Nelson fought the batteries, the first British soldiers had appeared on the summit of the hills to the rear of Bastia after a smart hike from St Fiorenzo. Lieutenant General David Dundas, their commanding officer, had even watched Nelson’s engagement, though he believed ‘many’ of the captain’s ‘shots struck the land’. On his part Nelson did not miss the soldiers on the hills, and smelling a battle thought them ‘the grandest thing I ever saw.’20

  But several days passed without any sign of action. The soldiers disappeared from the hills, leaving them strangely silent. For a while Horatio reassured himself that all would be well. ‘Seamen think they [the army] never mean to get forward,’ he told Fanny, ‘but I dare say they act on a surer principle.’21

  Unfortunately, his confidence melted. On 3 March Nelson was astonished to learn from Hood that after reconnoitring the town with his officers General Dundas had had enough. Without substantial reinforcements he considered any attack on Bastia a ridiculous folly. Far from mounting an assault, Dundas and his advance had already turned back to St Fiorenzo.

  3

  Nelson was dumbfounded.

  ‘What the general could have seen to have made a retreat necessary I cannot conceive,’ he complained. ‘The enemy’s force is 1,000 regulars and 1,000 or 1,500 irregulars.’ Nelson had assumed the army would march from St Fiorenzo and assault Bastia from the heights while the navy blockaded it at sea, and he had also picked out a place on the waterfront where men and guns could be landed to form auxiliary batteries. In his head he was still pursuing his idea of storming the town himself, with the Agamemnon, some frigates and five hundred or a thousand soldiers. The sea wall could be battered down, its guns silenced and troops landed to rush the town. As for the forts on the heights above, they would hold out longer of course, but their position was truly hopeless. They would be completely – overwhelmingly – isolated. The interior was held by thousands of fierce partisans. St Fiorenzo and the road to it were in the hands of the British, and the Royal Navy controlled the harbour and all approaches to the island. Deprived of every supply, the small garrisons in the hill forts could have no reason to hold out or bombard the town once it fell into British hands. Their capitulation was inevitable. From what Nelson had heard about the state of morale in Bastia, he convinced himself that there would be no great resistance from the French.22

  Hood’s letters shed little light on the mystery as far as Nelson was concerned. The admiral merely told him that General Dundas was ‘palsied’ and had ‘made up his mind to walk off’. These terse, un-informative phrases scarcely touched the explosive situation underneath. For at Toulon and St Fiorenzo, beyond Nelson’s ken, relations between the army and navy had been steadily disintegrating.23

  For one thing General Dundas, who commanded the British armed forces assisting the fleet, was a ditherer. A tall, thin and crabbed Scot whose mannerisms were the amusement of the rank and file, Dundas had abilities but just what they were was becoming increasingly mysterious. Most observers credited the success at St Fiorenzo to the general’s subordinates, Moore and Koehler, who had selected the site for the crucial British battery; to Captain Edward Cooke of the Royal Navy and a detachment of seamen whose ‘extraordinary exertion’ got the guns in place; and to the common redcoats who finally stormed the Convention redoubt. Even Moore, an army man if ever there was one, berated his superior’s vacillation. Dundas, he said, was terrified of hauling up the bigger guns and unable to decide how to use the lighter ones. However, it was less indecision than the general’s ingrained pessimism that constituted the greatest handicap to a man of his uncomfortable calling. As Sir Gilbert Elliot, a mere civilian, said, he was ‘always ready to throw up the game instead of playing for it’, and twice almost abandoned the enterprise. Back home his namesake, the new minister for war, grew so tired of the general’s negativity that he delivered a metaphorical boot to the seat of his breeches by bluntly complaining that ‘you only state a difficulty, and say nothing of the means of removing it’.24

  The most regrettable sequel of the combined operations at St Fiorenzo was a corrosive jealousy between the army and navy. The remarkable success of Cooke’s seamen, who had hauled guns three miles over precipices and up steep mountain heights to accomplish what the army had declared to be ‘impossible’, was one source of resentment. Another was the way the sailors had swept into the captured port and seized choice pieces of plunder. But leadership was the root of the problem. Some sea officers were dissatisfied with ‘the old rascally general’, but Lord Hood was by far the bigger fly in the ointment. For all his strengths Hood had serious professional failings, of which arrogance and a wilful disregard for the opinions of others were notable. Those shortcomings never did more damage than in Corsica, where they inflicted a compound fracture of interservice relations.25

  Determined to have his way, Hood repeatedly slighted the army officers, especially Dundas, who considered himself to be on an equal footing. Difficulties had begun in Toulon, where the general and other army officers had entreated Hood to prepare to evacuate the town only to be contemptuously ignored. The result was the last-minute bungled attempt to burn the French fleet and the loss of Britain’s naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. In Corsica the admiral’s presumptions intensified. Without consulting Dundas, Hood sent Moore and Koehler, the general’s own officers, to meet the partisans in January and personally received their report, something he later claimed proved that he was recognised as the supreme officer. During the siege of St Fiorenzo the admiral behaved as if he was the overall commander-in-chief, rather than the joint leader of a combined operation, and it was he who accepted the captured French colours. Immediately after the port’s fall he was pressing the forces towards Bastia without any regard for Dundas’s opinion.

  It was not just redcoats who felt the animosity Hood was breeding. Elliot, a firm admirer of the formidable admiral, watched with growing alarm, while Captain Fremantle considered that ‘the presumptuousness and overbearing conduct of Lord Hood to Dundas and all the army has been such as not to be borne with by any corps whatsoever, particularly from the army who are independent of us’. The spirit of cooperation and joint endeavour so essential to combined operations waned, and several aggrieved and underappreciated army officers found themselves resisting the admiral not only because they felt he was mistaken but also from an instinct to preserve the independence and dignity of their profession.26

  It was in this context that Dundas led a party in pursuit of the flying French and found himself looking upon Bastia from the mountain heights of the Colle de Teghime behind the town on 23 February. The general’s officers agreed that the ideal place for a battery was the ridge where a village named Cardo stood, commanding the four stone hill forts guarding the rear of Bastia. Moore, who was present, did not expect an easy victory. He worried about getting guns and supplies along the difficult road from St Fiorenzo and estimated that the town was defended by about four thousand men, a quarter of them Corsicans allied to the French, but he did not foresee a withdrawal. However, when the French made a sortie, expelled Dundas’s Corsicans from Cardo and began to dig themselves in there, the British made no attempt to intervene. Worse, to the surprise of ‘everybody’, the general ordered the force back to St
Fiorenzo without making any effort to resecure what he deemed to be crucial ground.27

  Back at base Dundas told Hood that he thought Bastia ‘out of [the] reach of any attempt that we can at present undertake’, and that he would need another two thousand men to launch an attack. Within a few days he was accumulating a formidable collection of pretexts for inaction. The weather was bad; the communication lines were difficult; the enemy had too many men; and the partisans were not holding the summit of the heights. He pointed out that an enemy sortie of 25 February seized the very ground from which Dundas and his staff had reconnoitred Bastia two days before, driving off the partisans and placing guns on a nearby height. They had also burned Cardo. In effect Dundas was admitting his failure to secure significant positions, but his argument was that the French were getting hold of the heights above the town and making an assault impossible. Without more men no more than a naval blockade of Bastia was feasible.28

  Although the capture of St Fiorenzo gave Hood a base for his fleet, he could not tie up forces reducing Bastia and Calvi for long, and was also conscious of the need to wind up operations before the ferocious summer heat attacked his forces. He could scarcely contain his anger at Dundas’s procrastination, and a flurry of testy letters flew back and forth. On 2 March, Hood wrote that he was ‘extremely concerned to find that you have given up all thought of reducing Corsica until you are reinforced by additional troops from Europe, because I do not see there is a prospect of any coming’. High-handedly he asked Dundas to return those members of the 11th, 25th, 30th and 69th regiments who had formerly served with the fleet as temporary marines, and demanded that any lost through sickness be replaced by men from other contingents of the army. At this further erosion of his forces, Dundas protested his inability both to supply the men and defend St Fiorenzo. He went further. He expressed his opposition to attacking Bastia in blunter terms than ever. ‘I consider the siege of Bastia, with our present means and force, to be a most visionary and rash attempt, such as no officer could be justified in undertaking,’ he fulminated. The battle lines between the two commanders were solidifying. It had become personal, with neither man willing to think or yield.29

  Momentarily Hood was deflated by Dundas’s opinion, backed as it was by the authority of at least one personal reconnaissance of the target. He began to reflect upon the unpleasant prospect of a costly, drawn-out blockade pinning down men and ships while allied powers screamed lustily for help elsewhere. ‘Poor Paoli,’ said Hood, was ‘distressed beyond measure by our inactivity, which I cannot cure because the more I urge a contrary conduct the more he [Dundas] is determined to lay upon his oars, by which our difficulties will daily increase.’ Then, after an abortive attempt to reconnoitre Bastia for himself, Hood got a letter from his man on the spot. Horatio Nelson had been blockading Corsica for more than three months, and no naval officer knew more about Bastia. Even more important, amidst counsels of despair Nelson alone talked the sort of language that Hood wanted to hear.30

  At the beginning of March, Nelson’s squadron, cruising all hours off Bastia, was reinforced by the Romney of fifty guns, captained by the able William Paget. In late February the Leda intercepted a Danish ship leaving the port, and learned from her that fear was spreading in Bastia, bread was scarce, merchants were preparing to flee and some residents were burying their valuables in the earth. The picture seemed to be confirmed by a Ragusan brig taken by the Agamemnon and Tartar in March and the talk of every local Nelson could find, as well as the activities revealed through his telescope. When he wrote to Hood on the 5th the tone remained decidedly upbeat. Nelson confirmed Dundas’s report that the enemy was at work on the ridges above the hill forts and noted the strengthening of other defences, but dwelt upon the panic in the town itself, where the citizens dreaded being exposed to Paoli’s wild partisans and spoke about burning La Flêche at anchor. ‘I learn that the enemy are in the greatest apprehension of our landing near the town, which in my opinion would fall on the first vigorous attack,’ he said.31

  Words like these were a tonic to Admiral Hood, and sent the blood coursing through his veins. He decided to sidestep Dundas, and on 7 March called upon two lieutenant colonels, Moore of the 51st and William Anne Villettes of the 69th Regiment, for independent opinions of the propriety of an attack. Though Moore disagreed with Dundas, he felt as if he was being asked to betray a superior officer, and to the admiral’s annoyance declined to report. Instead he told Dundas what had happened. The general was ‘warm and irritated to the highest degree’ and snorted to Moore that Hood ‘never reasoned himself nor would he listen to reason from others’.32

  Well might Dundas boil, for Hood was moving decisively to neutralise him. In two letters the admiral arrogantly informed Dundas that ‘however visionary and rash an attempt to reduce Bastia may be in your opinion, to me it appears very much the reverse and to be a perfectly right measure’. Far from needing Dundas’s blessing, he would make the attack ‘at my own risk’, and what was more he would use the soldiers as he saw fit. ‘I do not hesitate to say that your power most undoubtedly ceased after the evacuation of Toulon, when the troops as well as ships were at my disposal,’ he wrote. Dundas read in horror that he had only been consulted in Corsica at all as a mere ‘courtesy’.33

  Dundas was being treated as if he was in charge of a detachment of marines rather than a field army, or worse ‘a mere passenger’. Storming to his officers, he won their support and then resigned his command, sailing almost immediately for Civita Vecchia on 11 March. His parting shot to Hood mentioned his indifferent health and demanded to see any written authority that put the soldiers under the admiral’s command. Justifying himself to the home secretary (soon to become the minister of war), Dundas comprehensively catalogued his difficulties: the number of the enemy (at least fourteen hundred regulars, a civilian militia and the crew of La Flêche); the inclement mountainous weather; the problem of bringing artillery from St Fiorenzo; and shortages of camp equipment, medical supplies, men, carriages and guns. In such circumstances, opined the general, a direct attack on Bastia was ‘visionary and hazardous in the highest degree, and most likely to be attended with loss and disgrace’. He had made some good points, though his unrelieved pessimism failed to consider a single problem of a caged enemy. Elliot observed that Dundas’s resignation was regrettable but ‘necessary’ for the service to go ‘forward’.34

  The departure of the doubting general failed to ease difficulties because the resentment he and Hood had generated lived on. Even moderate, sensible men were taking sides. Elliot the diplomat was leaning towards the navy, convinced that sea officers were a ‘manly’ breed, ‘full of life and action’ and entirely preferable to the ‘high lounge and still life’ in the army camps. Moore, on the other hand, grew to detest Hood, who was ‘illiberal to a degree’ and whose ‘actions in the Mediterranean have been unwise . . . He is so false and so unmanageable that it is impossible for any general to carry on service with him.’ Not surprisingly, Brigadier General Abraham D’Aubant of the engineers was no blank sheet when he temporarily succeeded to the command Dundas had vacated. His mind had already been poisoned by the feud between the service chiefs.35

  More, professionally speaking D’Aubant was much poorer material than his predecessor. Moore found him ‘much averse’ to attacking Bastia without ever having seen the town, and thought he should be ‘broke’ for it. ‘It is difficult to speak more nonsense than he does with more gravity and decorum of matter,’ thought Moore. In fact the lieutenant colonel’s opinion of his new superior was so poor that he began to question the wisdom of moving against Bastia. His former opinion, in favour of an assault, began to quake. With D’Aubant in charge Moore was sure it would be botched.36

  Wrapped in his blockade, Nelson hardly knew that the task force was disintegrating behind him at St Fiorenzo. He appealed to Hood for shallow vessels to help him fire on fortifications ashore and stop supplies edging along the coast, and busily stationed them as each arrived, La
Billette, the Fortune, Swallow, Scout, Fox, Vanneau, Rose, Petit Bonbon, Jean Bart, Vigilant and the St Croix, which was now commanded by an old Agamemnon, Lieutenant Suckling. Nelson’s confidence remained unshaken. His temperament was to make light of his own difficulties and fix upon those of the French. Indeed, in his impatience for action he overeagerly seized upon every indication of the enemy’s weakness. He was told, for example, that Bastia was so close to panic that Lacombe St Michel, a one-time artillery officer the French National Convention had sent to defend the town, was threatening to blow himself up in the citadel rather than yield to the public clamour for surrender. This, however, dangerously caricatured the strength of resistance.37

  But Nelson was right about the eventual futility of the French predicament, and about himself and his men. There would be no stinting on the part of the captain of the Agamemnon. It was not in his nature, and he felt duty bound, in part to the Corsican struggle for independence. As he promised Paoli, ‘nothing shall be wanting on my part to assist your brave Corsicans’. As for his ship’s company he believed them capable of most things naval. He had sharpened them in success after success until they were as keen as bayonet points. ‘My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be,’ he told his wife. ‘To you I may say it – almost invincible! They really mind shot no more than peas!’38

  4

  There were many differences between warfare on land and sea, and Nelson never fully grasped them. The finer arts of siege work, the interplay of infantry and cavalry, the rapid fluidity of movement ashore and to some extent the importance of ground were apt to confound him. Intelligence was crucial to all armed services, but never more so than in operations on land, where the true state and scale of an opposing force could easily be masked behind terrain or buildings. In Corsica Nelson’s information about Bastia proved seriously deficient and courted disaster. For a while, supposing the enemy on the point of collapse, he talked about launching a frontal attack upon the town, using ships to bombard the defences before storming them with a few hundred soldiers. Fortunately, as he saw the enemy improving their positions, he abandoned the idea early in March. An alternative plan began to evolve.