Nelson

by John Sugden

  While romance blossomed on the Inconstant, Nelson buckled down to blockading Leghorn. He warned unsuspecting British merchantmen that the port was no longer safe, and shut in the enemy privateers and other vessels, save only the local fishing craft which he permitted to go freely about their daily business. Some of the fishermen, such as Giovanni Nere, were sources of information and got his messages in and out of the town as they plied innocently back and forth. Ashore the few remaining threads of neutrality were stretched to their limits. Bonaparte ordered his men to avoid unnecessary confrontations with the Tuscans, and concentrated his soldiers in two forts rather than quartering them with the inhabitants. Nevertheless, he subordinated the Tuscan troops to his control and exercised a firm grip on the town. When he ordered the people to illuminate their houses in celebration they did so, and the streets echoed to the tramping of squads of French soldiery in search of arms and spoils. Bonaparte sequestrated remaining British property, sealed up warehouses and declared that anyone hiding it or treating with the enemy warships would be shot. Still, Nelson’s messengers managed to pass warily about the town and perhaps rapped urgently upon Adelaide’s door.

  With a rudimentary control established, Bonaparte rushed inland with his cavalry on 29 June, alarmed by a report that the Austrians were again massing for the relief of Mantua. Behind in Leghorn he left General Claude-Henri Belgrand, Comte de Vaubois with the 75th demi-brigade, a company of artillery and a squadron of hussars, amounting in all to more than two thousand men, with orders to prepare the means of withstanding a forty-day siege in case the British or Tuscans counterattacked. The next day, the last in June, Nelson also left, satisfied that for the moment no more could be done. His destination was St Fiorenzo, where the squalid streets between the bay and the heights now bustled with refugees from Leghorn. There were important implications to be discussed with the viceroy, Sir Gilbert Elliot.10

  The loss of Leghorn was a blow to the British. The submission of the papal territories and Tuscany to France had closed their ports to British ships and turned the Italian peninsula between Naples and Genoa into enemy territory. Leghorn in particular had provided the Royal Navy with shelter, dockyard facilities, a prize court and supplies, but these favours were now reserved for the French, and the port had become a dangerous launching pad for the invasion of Corsica. The inconveniences Elliot could handle. Mail for England would have to go through Barcelona rather than Italy. Treasury bills could be cashed in Genoa instead of Leghorn, and provisions purchased there or from Naples and the Barbary ports. But that close proximity of French power cast chilling shadows over Corsica, and if Corsica fell Britain would lose its only Mediterranean base east of Gibraltar.11

  The truth was that Bonaparte was teaching Jervis, Nelson and Elliot the limits of sea power. Leghorn was only part of a process that would also cost them Genoa, Corsica and the Mediterranean itself. Like Alexander of Macedon before him, Bonaparte would conquer the sea from the land.

  3

  Nelson soon had formal orders to blockade Leghorn and help Sir Gilbert Elliot to defend Corsica. The Meleager and Blanche frigates were at his disposal, together with such smaller vessels as the L’Eclair sloop, the six-gun Vanneau brig and the Rose cutter of ten guns.

  Sir John was as supportive as circumstances permitted. In switching Cockburn from the Meleager to the larger La Minerve, he wrote to Nelson, ‘I will not keep him four and twenty hours to make the exchange, knowing how much you rely on his arm.’ Nelson likewise found a sturdy crutch in Elliot. The sophisticated diplomat, fluent in ideas and strong in his support of the navy, was a reassuring and sympathetic ear, especially now that Drake was in Vienna. Whereas many a naval officer went to Nelson for comfort and counsel, the commodore himself turned to Sir Gilbert, ‘a treasure’ he had grown to love. Both the viceroy and his lady reciprocated. Sir Gilbert had a huge affection for Nelson, while Lady Elliot declared herself a ‘great admirer’. It was Elliot who found a solution to one of the commodore’s problems, the loss of the prize-court facility in Leghorn. He incorporated Corsican privateers in the commodore’s forces. Though Nelson had to concede them a share in any prize money, he gained access to the courts in Corsica and the speedy resolution of cases.12

  His resources remained barely adequate, however. He had to communicate with Genoa, where information, provisions and specie could be obtained, with Elliot in Bastia, and with Jervis and the fleet off Toulon, as well as arrange for the safe passage of merchantmen, suppliers and packets east and west. Moreover, there would be no half-measures with this blockade. In the commodore’s opinion such a blockade as ‘the one we had of Genoa’ back in 1793 would be ‘of little consequence’, and Jervis concurred. Nothing must get in or out of Leghorn without Nelson’s permission. As before, fishermen would pass to and fro, but no one else. Nelson imagined the port falling dead, its commerce stilled, and the furious Tuscans turning upon their French guests and expelling them from the town. Relying much upon his reputation, he confidently publicised the blockade throughout the region. ‘It will be credited, if my character is known,’ he said, ‘that this blockade will be attended to with a degree of vigour unexampled in the present war.’13

  Nelson instituted the blockade on 6 July, but almost immediately received a call for help from Elliot. On his last visit to Corsica, Nelson had spoken to Elliot about the danger of another possession of Tuscany falling to the enemy. The island of Elba was part way between Leghorn and Corsica, and in French hands could be used to threaten Corsica or interrupt British communications with Italy. At the end of June, Trevor had suggested Nelson seize Elba as a precaution, risking whatever offence its occupation might cause Tuscany to ensure the safety of Corsica, and now Elliot agreed.14

  On 1 July, Elliot sent Major John Duncan of the Royal Artillery with letters to the governor of Elba, Baron Giorgio Knesevich, suggesting a temporary British occupation to protect the island from the French. The baron was by no means sure that a British garrison would improve his security. His political masters had been cowed by Bonaparte, and the governor of Leghorn had already been dismissed for assisting the British. Furthermore, inviting the British into Elba might simply provoke French reprisals against Tuscan possessions on the mainland. Given Bonaparte’s current weakness at sea, the French threat to Elba was not, in the baron’s view, imminent, and he wanted no bold moves. Rather he would sit tight and await instructions from his government. However, in replying to Elliot he admitted that if the French landed in Elba in overwhelming force, he expected he would have to follow the example of Leghorn and submit rather than fight them.15

  Elliot was in no mood to risk a French takeover of Elba, and after reading Knesevich’s replies and hearing from Duncan on 6 July he mobilised his troops. Five hundred and thirty men of the 18th (Royal Irish), 100th and 51st regiments, Dillon’s regiment, and the Royal Artillery were immediately embarked. Duncan, who commanded, was supplied with a summons to present to the garrison at Porto Ferraio, and told to take military control of the place, leaving the governor to command the civil administration. Nominally, the island would remain subject to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Several ships were speedily assembled for the expedition. The ubiquitous Fremantle commanded the naval force, which consisted of his own Inconstant, the Flora frigate (Captain Robert Middleton), the Vanneau (Lieutenant Gourly) and the Rose (Lieutenant William Walker), supported by a Corsican privateer and four transports. To play safe, Elliot sent for Nelson at Leghorn looking for his aid.

  As one of the original movers of the business, Nelson responded immediately, leaving Sawyer to blockade Leghorn with the Blanche, the Sardine sloop under Edward Killwick and three gunboats. Rushing to Elba with the Peterel he arrived off the capital, Porto Ferraio, late on 8 July, just as Fremantle’s flotilla was working in from the west. Nelson took overall command, and the next day increased his force with the Southampton under Captain James Macnamara, which was by chance already anchored off the port.16

  Porto Ferraio was a formidably strikin
g place, with enveloping green hills and a large citadel crowning the high cliffs above the town, its guns dominating both land and sea. The commodious anchorage below was enclosed on three sides by the town and a long jetty. Porto Ferraio was so powerful that Duncan later said that with five hundred men he could have defended it against ‘the whole of Buonoparte’s army’, and the Tuscans had a hundred pieces of artillery, four hundred regular soldiers and an armed militia. There was no possibility of surprising the place, and after a party of British officers had been rowed around to assess possible landing places frowns began to appear on faces. Nelson held a council of war aboard the Captain, and mooted the alternatives. In their dispatches the senior army and navy officers spoke of the ‘cordiality’ that existed between the services, and Duncan saluted the commodore’s ‘enterprising and spirited conduct’. But according to Fremantle’s private diary old divisions reared their ugly heads. ‘The soldiers [were] very undetermined and very jealous of us,’ he wrote, and doubted whether the castle could be taken. A ‘long consultation’ ensued ‘about landing the troops’, and ‘Nelson and I offer[ed] to take the town with the ships [alone]’.17

  A repetition of Bastia, with the army left looking on, was unthinkable, but Nelson managed to prevail, no doubt invoking his friendship with Duncan, an old Corsican comrade in arms. In two and a half hours the same evening the soldiers were disembarked with a field piece in a bay two miles west of Porto Ferraio. Using four more guns, landed under the cover of armed launches and small warships, they quickly occupied defensible ground, and lay under arms all night. Daylight of 10 July found Duncan moving forward with an advanced guard of the 18th Regiment, taking possession of some windmills four hundred yards from the town, and sealing it off from the landward side. Elliot’s summons was then handed in at the nearest gate. It insisted upon a British occupation of the fortifications and overall control, but promised that in all other respects matters would continue as before. The governor’s civil authority would be respected, and as soon as the danger to Corsica had been averted, the redcoats would withdraw.

  Knesevich was given two hours to reply but needed persuading. After conferring with his officers and advisers, he agreed to allow the British into the town, but not the castle, and a clash of arms looked inevitable. Nelson and Fremantle went ashore to reassure civilians that they and their property were safe, while Berry menaced the castle by placing the Captain’s guns within half a pistol-shot range of the grand bastion. British resolution finally did the trick. At eight o’clock in the morning Duncan’s soldiers took possession of the town gates, where they were received by the governor and his principal men, and then marched into ‘the Grand Parade’. Another couple of hours gave them control of the fortifications. Nelson’s ships anchored in the harbour, and the commodore exchanged a salute with the citadel, firing gun for gun. A garrison of 725 men was eventually installed.

  It looked as if Tuscany was being dismembered by the rival powers, with the British purloining Elba to counterbalance the French occupation of Leghorn, but Nelson declared the two actions of a very different character. The people of Elba had been spared the miseries of ‘the unfortunate Leghornese’, and under British protection would enjoy ‘an increase to their happiness’. There was no sequestration of Tuscan property. The only spoils, shared equally between the army and navy, were a French privateer, its English prize and several other vessels belonging to the enemy. Nor did the populace appear dissatisfied. The streets of Porto Ferraio remained ‘quiet’, and when Miss Betsy Wynne, still enjoying life close to the ‘excellent’ captain of the Inconstant, accompanied a party ashore soon after the occupation, it was received ‘with the greatest demonstration of joy’.18

  4

  Jervis was delighted, and promised to recommend Berry’s promotion, but the seizure of Elba really did no more than ameliorate Elliot’s difficulties. On the mainland to the north and east French influence spread like a black flame. The Royal Navy still held the seas, but one by one the neutral sanctuaries that had provisioned and sheltered its ships were closing, and in August the allied coalition suffered another serious blow, the worst yet. France and Spain signed a defensive and offensive treaty, making it merely a matter of time before the Spaniards declared war on Britain, their former ally. The implications were serious, for despite its decline Spain was still the third greatest naval power in the world, and the combined Franco-Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean far outnumbered the ships of Sir John Jervis.19

  To Elliot, ruling a small island in an increasingly dangerous sea, the prospects were exceedingly cloudy, but there was a little solace to be had from Nelson’s refusal to be intimidated. Indeed, the weather-worn little commodore seemed to relish grappling with the ‘Dons’. To some extent he had learned to discount numbers when it came to fighting at sea. In the Mediterranean the variable winds made it difficult for big fleets to manoeuvre as an entity, and it was likely that only a portion of any large enemy force would be effective at a given time. Besides, Nelson did not rate the French and Spanish fleets very highly. He told Jackson, Trevor’s deputy, that with twenty-five sail Jervis could beat forty French opponents, ‘by taking those advantages which their [our] superior skill and management of the ships would not fail to afford’.20

  For some time Nelson had been praying the French would break out of Toulon and give Jervis an opportunity to thrash them, and his only fear was that, stuck out in the Gulf of Genoa, he would miss the battle. He begged Sir John to recall him the moment action loomed. ‘I have only to hope,’ he wrote on 3 July, ‘that when it is reduced to a certainty that Mr Martin [the French admiral] means to give you a meeting, that I may be called upon to assist that ceremony.’ Early the following month Nelson showed that he was capable of disobeying orders to get a crack at the French. A Spanish fleet of ten ships of the line was supposed to have sailed from Cadiz on 1 August and linked up with a French squadron to enter the Mediterranean. Expecting a battle at last, Jervis called in his ships of the line, including the Captain. However, believing that only Nelson could handle affairs in the Gulf of Genoa at such a critical time, he ordered the commodore to remain on that station, and to temporarily transfer his pendant to a frigate during the Captain’s absence. Nelson could no more have flown to the moon than allow his ship to leave him behind with a battle brewing. Discarding the admiral’s orders, he took the Captain to Toulon himself.21

  That scare eased, and Nelson was soon back with his squadron, though just as willing to profit from the Franco-Spanish alliance. His powerful sense of loyalty told him that Spain was acting dishonourably in changing sides, and deserved punishment. Late in August, with Britain and Spain still officially at peace, Nelson tried to persuade his superiors to loose him upon a Spanish warship that had gone into the Tiber to collect the tribute Bonaparte had wrung from the papal states. He argued that any ship carrying French property, whether belonging to a belligerent power or not, was liable to seizure, and though Jervis agreed Nelson never got to make the raid. A month later, only weeks before the Spanish war actually began, Nelson restrained himself again when he turned a Spanish frigate away from Leghorn. He desperately wanted to capture the ship, but had to accept that as far as either he or the Spanish captain knew their two nations were still at peace.22

  Nelson remained Nelson, undaunted, undismayed, but there was no doubt that his cause was sinking. The alliance of Spain and France made a direct attack on Britain feasible, and the Royal Navy would need to regroup nearer home, withdrawing forces from the Mediterranean and elsewhere if necessary. In any case, with allies and neutrals being knocked out of the war right and left, there seemed little more than trade to fight for east of the Strait of Gibraltar. In the line of duty Nelson was a fighter first and last, even with allies crumbling around him, but the prevailing tide was surging inexorably in the opposite direction.

  5

  Nelson now focused his energies on Leghorn, but encouraged by his capture of Porto Ferraio brought a new aggression to the job. If he
could expel the French, he could open the port to the British again, weaken the threat to Corsica, and possibly threaten the right flank of the French army as it confronted yet another Austrian attempt to relieve Mantua. Furthermore, the Viennese court was pressing for just such a naval diversion.23

  Nelson believed a victory essential for morale. Throughout Italy resistance to the French was evaporating, and even the King of Naples, hitherto the surest of Britain’s friends, had signed an armistice. However, Bonaparte’s violation of Genoa and Tuscany had provoked outrage as well as fear, and it was conceivable that the spirit of resistance might revive. If the new Austrian commander-in-chief, Marshal Count Dagobert-Sigismond de Wurmser, could defeat Bonaparte, and Tuscany be freed . . . In Nelson’s limited view of the land struggle, all that was needed to turn the tide against these bedraggled French armies of half-fed boys was unity, resolution and courage.

  Several thousand French soldiers still held Leghorn, but the few gunboats they had fitted out had not, as yet, seriously challenged Nelson’s blockade. At different times his force included the Captain and Diadem ships of the line, La Minerve, Blanche and Lively frigates, the Sardine, Peterel, L’Eclair, Sincere and Vanneau sloops and brigs, and the Fox and Rose cutters. Two gunboats taken at Oneglia and renamed Vixen and Venom, and a number of Corsican privateers supplied by Elliot helped Nelson control the shallows while his larger ships occupied the deeper water in the northern road. Small craft were essential to the work of running down enemy ships trying to enter the port, but they were constantly having to be redeployed as packets, and a French privateer taken on 11 August was happily added to the commodore’s blockading flotilla.24

  At first the blockade was unyielding, shutting all ships in or out of Leghorn, but persistent appeals and the advice of Elliot and Jervis induced the commodore to relax his grip. First the vessels of favoured nations – Swedes and Neapolitans (‘I have every inclination to befriend every Neapolitan; the good faith of the king of Naples demands and ensures it of us’) – and then Venetians, Ragusans and Danes were allowed to leave Leghorn without their cargoes. But nothing was admitted, and by the beginning of September the harbours that once thronged with shipping lay unhealthily silent and still.25