by John Sugden
The fishermen came and went, of course. Ever since his cruises off Boston years before Nelson had regretted the way wars abused their frugal livelihoods, and on 22 August he notified the governor of Leghorn that he
had given passports to every fisherman to go out as usual with their tartans, and it is with astonishment I find that the poor fishermen, who are obliged to come on board my sovereign’s ship to obtain that permission, which not only maintains a number of poor Tuscan families but also supplies the town of Leghorn with fish, are, by your Excellency, as president of the health-office, subjected to a quarantine of ten days, although I have given my word of honour, which till now never was doubted, that I am with my squadron in libera practica. 26
Intelligence as well as humanity was his game, for as many as twenty of these fishing boats gathered under the stern of the Captain each morning to secure leave to proceed, bringing with them information and messages from the town. One master (perhaps Giovanni Nere, whose services had already earned a certificate of immunity from Nelson, or maybe an informant named Pensa) became a regular ‘reporter’. Nelson paid for spies. They hurried through sunlit courtyards and the labyrinth of shadowy, narrow, interlocking streets, and communicated in whispers to pro-British elements within the town, including old employees of the British consulate. Nelson managed a furtive correspondence with the friendly Neapolitan consul in Leghorn (‘I . . . shall endeavour to get a letter to him this evening’), and of course there was Adelaide.27
She spoke French as well as Italian, and may now have been consorting as freely with Bonaparte’s officers as once she had with their English counterparts, picking up useful tidbits in the process. Probably Adelaide was one source of Nelson’s information about what was happening in Leghorn, but scholars who have suggested that she spied for him, exchanging information for money like some eighteenth-century Mata Hari, are probably exaggerating. Nelson did pay spies, but there appears to be no evidence that his donations to Adelaide were made on that account; more likely they represented long-standing maintenance commitments to a mistress.
The impression that Adelaide was something more than an occasional and minor contributor to Nelson’s secret service gained strength from a letter the commodore wrote to Elliot on 3 August. ‘One old lady tells us all she hears,’ he said, with a use of italics that suggests his informant was far from undesirable. Almost every biographer since Oliver Warner has supposed that Nelson was referring to Adelaide, but this was probably not the case. Much more likely he alluded to Madame Frances Caffarena of the Strada Balbi in Genoa, the English wife of an Italian merchant. Joseph Caffarena, his wife and two sons supplied provisions to the British fleet. In dealing with Madame Caffarena, who handled much of the correspondence, Nelson found her so politically astute and observant that he asked her to act as an informer, cautioning her – as she said – ‘with agreeable pleasantry to take care what I wrote’. The day Nelson wrote his letter to Elliot, Madame Caffarena replied: ‘I shall always be happy to obey your commands, and if you can pass over the errors of a female pen, what may come to my knowledge I shall immediately communicate to you with infinite satisfaction. My only fear is getting truth out of the various cross-purposes propagated by the agents of the mushroom republick.’28
So Adelaide may have to be acquitted of systematic spying, though Nelson did maintain a complicated communication line to his mistress, and probably benefited from some of her news. ‘Signora Adelaide’ was still at Bagno di Pisa, where the gossip of creaking crowned heads and tourists had been largely replaced by the political chatter of dislodged Leghornese. It is not clear how Adelaide and Nelson corresponded during the French occupation, but they did. In July, Udny, the former British consul, now banished to Corsica, even directed a letter to the commodore via his mistress’s address. Udny knew Adelaide well. ‘Remember me to your friend,’ he told Nelson. A month later, after moving to Porto Ferraio, Udny wrote to Nelson again, adding that it would ‘give me the sincerest satisfaction to obey your commands, or that of your friend, to whom I beg to be remembered’.29
Whatever channels Nelson used to reach Adelaide through Leghorn became too dangerous in August, and he began reaching her through Brame, the consul at Genoa, instead. On the 21st Brame wrote to Nelson that ‘your message to Signora Adelaide was immediately sent, and any answer I may receive shall go herewith’. The next day he wrote again. ‘I this morning received the honour of your kind letter of the 19th instant. The enclosed for Signora Adelaide was immediately sent, and [I] presume Captain Sawyer [of the Blanche] will bring the answer. If sent to me shall go herewith.’ Early the next month Brame mentioned sending two enclosures to Nelson, but whether these related to Adelaide is unknown. The vehicle for these letters was most probably Adelaide’s mother, who lived in Genoa and likely sent correspondence for her daughter back and forth.30
The news from these and other sources encouraged Nelson. Pro-British sentiment in Leghorn was strong, he learned. Bonaparte had hoped to raise seven or eight million livres from selling British property in the town, and his agents had combed through the books of the mercantile houses and called in relevant debts. But when Udny’s furniture went to auction it found no buyers, and had to be lugged back to his house. Nelson heard that the locals were fed up with the French. Some resented the removal of Spannochi and his foreign minister, Franco Seratti, as well as the alien rule through French stooges, while the poor suffered from the suspension of trade, as Nelson learned directly from the hundreds of destitute people who reached his ships in small boats to partake of what provisions he could spare. So many of the inhabitants were reported to resent the imposition of a French fête on 10 August that Nelson believed it would signal an uprising. He told his old friend Collingwood, who had just joined the fleet, that he hoped to prompt the ‘starved Leghornese to cut the throats of the French crew’, and to Jervis he even ventured a date. ‘Almost all Tuscany is in motion,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt but by the 15th we shall have Leghorn.’31
When nothing happened, he blamed the Grand Duke for restraining the people. He also seems to have chided the governor of Leghorn with submitting too tamely to the French, and was gently reminded that the Tuscan troops were outnumbered by the occupying forces, who also commanded the batteries and strong points. Long before then Nelson had decided they needed help.32
6
Horatio Nelson always complained impatiently when the seashore divided him from his enemies, and enjoyed landing with men and guns to embark upon adventures conventionally reserved for the army. Anything to discomfort the enemy. The pattern had been woven in the sixteen years between Nicaragua in 1780 and the taking of Porto Ferraio. In the spring of 1796, encouraged by Drake, he bewailed his lack of three thousand soldiers to facilitate such attacks. ‘I am vain enough to think I could command on shore as well as some of the generals,’ he told Trevor. Now, waiting for the Leghornese to oust the French, he wondered again whether a direct British counterattack might move matters forward.33
The starting point for this, his most ambitious military proposal yet, may have been a report from inside the town, apparently by a clerk of the former British trade factory. Nelson had heard that the number of French soldiers in Leghorn had risen to five thousand, but this intelligence painted a different picture. The enemy was down to about eighteen hundred men, and they were billeted in two forts, afraid of an increasingly hostile populace. Their relations with the Tuscan troops were bad, and the latter were being reinforced, both cavalry and infantry having been brought into the town disguised as peasants. An anti-French spirit was abroad and the local militia had been put on alert, ready to act at short notice. Only a signal from the Grand Duke was needed to spark a rising. Nelson was not always good at evaluating intelligence. He sometimes believed what he wanted to hear. When other reports tended to confirm that the occupying French forces had dwindled his warrior spirit rose to its feet.34
Elliot became his confederate, lured by the prospect of reducing the threat to Co
rsica. He felt that if the Austrians gained ‘a decided superiority’ in Lombardy and drew the strength and attention of the French an attack might be made on Leghorn ‘without danger, for the enemy are too few to quit their walls and . . . disturb us, either landing or embarking’. On 5 August, Nelson suggested a thousand regulars from Corsica, stiffened by marines and a party of seamen ‘to make a show’, could be disembarked with enough artillery to give the French a pretext for quitting with honour. He knew that an orthodox siege was out of the question, but hoped the Tuscans would support him by yielding the town, and that the isolated French garrisons could be induced to withdraw under a brief bombardment. Supposed demoralisation and desertions among the French were also strands in his thinking. ‘Our only consideration – is the honour and benefit to our country worth the risk? If it is, and I think so, in God’s name let us get to work, and hope for his blessing on our endeavours to liberate a people who have been our sincere friends.’ A problem, he thought, might be the command of the operation. Allowing ambition to blunt memories of old squabbles, he suggested that Major Duncan head the army, and that overall command be offered himself, especially as he now held a commission as colonel of marines and was already ‘feared or respected in Leghorn’. The suggestion demonstrates, among other things, that despite the problem between the services at Porto Ferraio, Nelson had established a good relationship with Duncan, and was happy working with him. His prediction was that a mere ‘twenty-four hours’ would ‘do the business’.35
Elliot was soon preparing his troops, recalling some from Elba to strengthen his regulars. The force he planned to use fell to three thousand British and Corsican regulars and volunteers, in addition to artillery and five hundred marines from the fleet, but it was larger than the inadequate army proposed by Nelson. Moreover, smitten by his own continuing difficulties with army officers in Corsica, Elliot cautioned Nelson against taking overall command of the expedition. It would reopen old wounds and ‘blow us all up at once’. Nor was there a need, the viceroy tactfully explained. Major General John Thomas De Burgh of the 66th Foot, who now commanded in Corsica, was not only an experienced ‘cool and well-skilled’ soldier of ‘spirit and courage’ but a thorough gentleman. If anything, Elliot underrated De Burgh. The general doubted the accuracy of Nelson’s intelligence, but saw advantages in his plan and generously offered to command the soldiers under the supreme command of Nelson. The commodore, he said, ‘appears to me to like [to] be the chief.’ Fortunately, Elliot did not have to require any such submission, for Nelson accepted the viceroy’s reservations with good heart, and readily agreed to a joint navy–army command. As far as the armed services were concerned, the leaders gave every appearance of wishing a productive relationship.36
As the plan for a coup de main passed from officer to officer some raised doubts, and there were gentle hints that Nelson’s proverbial ‘zeal’ for action was apt to outstrip his judgement. Major Duncan, who had shown a little irresolution at Porto Ferraio, sounded one cautious note after a ship brought new information from Leghorn on the 11th. It put the French strength at three thousand regulars, besides Corsican auxiliaries, and a large number of mounted guns. They had purloined the ample salted provisions originally amassed for the British fleet and established a powerful presence in the area. Pro-French Corsicans, wearing national cockades in their hats, marched about the streets with drawn swords, while French dragoons daily cantered through the town gates to patrol the adjacent countryside. ‘Commodore Nelson shows his usual spirit in saying it [Leghorn] may be taken by 1,000 men,’ concluded Duncan. ‘He must suppose the French perfect cowards.’37
Admiral Jervis did not go so far. He was willing to countenance the attack, but only in tandem with a successful Austrian campaign that tied down the French army and prevented the enemy troops in Leghorn from being reinforced. The British could then foment a Tuscan uprising, and intrigue, ‘poison’ and the ‘stiletto’ would support a seaborne attack. However, even Jervis worried about Nelson’s enthusiasm for ill-resourced amphibious operations. ‘We have no business with Vado or Port Especcia [Spezia] until the Austrians enter Piedmont,’ he warned. The admiral cautioned Elliot to steer Nelson from rash enterprises. ‘I am very glad you have a little damped the ardour of Commodore Nelson respecting the republic of Genoa,’ he congratulated the viceroy. ‘He is an excellent partisan, but does not sufficiently weigh consequences.’ When Elliot told him he had dissuaded Nelson from pressing for the overall command of the Leghorn assault, Jervis agreed. As a naval officer Nelson was ‘the best fellow in the world’, but on land ‘his zeal does now and then (not often) outrun his discretion’.38
Nelson certainly anticipated further glory. His brother William was let into ‘a secret – that probably the next letter you see from me will be in the public Gazette’. But there were no triumphant dispatches, and Nelson found himself writing that his expedition had been ‘blasted’.39
It had been ready to go. Major James Logan of the 51st, sent to Leghorn to pore over the remaining doubts with the commodore, returned to Bastia on 13 August more or less satisfied that an attack would involve little risk. Nelson assured him that the country folk around Leghorn would support the allies, and thought the prospects of success were good. Accordingly, Elliot had fifteen hundred regulars and a thousand volunteers at Bastia, preparing to embark on the Rose, Vanneau and four Corsican privateers on the 19th.
Unfortunately the Austrians failed them. Marching south towards Mantua, they suffered successive stinging defeats and retired to the Tyrol, and just as the first rumours of the reverses reached Corsica through Florence, there also came word that six hundred French reinforcements had marched into Leghorn. The viceroy wavered. These bleaker circumstances were hardly going to stimulate the Tuscans to rebel, and Jervis had insisted all along that the expedition must hinge upon Austrian success. The venture was mothballed, awaiting another and more favourable twist in fortune.
By 15 August, Elliot was trying to salvage the expedition by appealing to Austria and Naples to supply three thousand troops. The next day Nelson himself arrived at Bastia to strengthen his determination, and as late as September the indefatigable Drake was still pursuing the idea of using foreign contingents to create a viable force. But by then a coup de grâce had been delivered. Before the end of August an order to transfer the 100th Regiment of Foot, some eight hundred regulars, from Corsica to Gibraltar, stripped the viceroy of the men to do the job. On the 25th he told the doubting Major Duncan that the plan had been dropped for good.40
Nelson was disappointed. In his dreams he was the liberator of Leghorn. Then he saw himself visiting Civita Vecchia brandishing Elliot’s ‘manifesto’, seizing that Spanish warship loaded with Bonaparte’s plunder, and treating the pontiff himself to some ‘firm language’, even if it meant rowing ‘up the Tiber and into Rome’ in his barge. His appearance, he expected, might embolden the Italian states. ‘Go and thunder at Civita Vecchia,’ Admiral Jervis had urged. Both projects were shelved, but in stranger days several years ahead both Leghorn and Rome would, ironically, surrender to Nelson’s ships.41
In the meantime a serious consequence of leaving Leghorn under enemy occupation quickly emerged, for it was in the town that a new and deadly French plan to invade Corsica by stealth matured. Hotham’s battles had taught the French the dangers of confronting the British fleet in open battle, but by no means gave Britain total command of the sea. Nelson had failed to stop the coastal trade, and enemy ships had continued to use dark nights and bad weather to sneak by his stretched cruisers. Very well, Bonaparte and his advisers decided, Corsica could be invaded piecemeal by small detachments taking their chances in quick voyages. Leghorn was used to muster thousands of soldiers, privateersmen and Corsican émigrés – men dislodged from the island by the British two years before – and to fuse them into an invasion force under General Gentile, who had commanded the French army during the siege of Bastia. There would be no showdown with the British fleet. The invaders would cr
eep out of Leghorn and other ports at night in dribs and drabs, using dead calms to transport men in oared privateers and feluccas to lonely, unguarded places on the wild Corsican coast. Some of these detachments could use the Genoese island of Capraia as a stopover, perhaps changing boats there. Corsica would be reclaimed for France through a gradual process of furtive infiltration and guerrilla warfare.
Some republicans had landed in Corsica in June, scrambling into the interior to hide out and foment discord, but the plan took another two months to get properly underway. Nelson and Elliot got wind of it in August, amongst others from the Caffarenas of Genoa, who saw Gentile and some of his men pass through their town on their way to Leghorn. To hear the adventurers talk of the proposed coup in Corsica ‘they think themselves already there,’ wrote Madame Caffarena. Unfortunately, there was little Nelson and the viceroy could do. Nelson reported the development to Lord Spencer and recommended extra vigilance all round. Cockburn’s forty-gun frigate La Minerve ran a French ship ashore and captured it on 8 September, and Elliot hired local guardas costas to patrol the Corsican coast, but the French were adept at slipping from one craggy cove to another and running along the shores on moonless nights.42
In fact, Bonaparte, not Nelson and Jervis, controlled this contest. Nelson’s plans were constantly unravelling and being overtaken. He had failed to halt the French on the riviera, or to reopen Tuscany and the papal territories to British ships. Then in September he was thrown further backwards, as another crucial source of succour was lost. Genoa finally broke its cosmetic neutrality and Nelson himself was made the unwitting instrument.