by John Sugden
The chances of the situation drifting out of control had to be closed down, and the next day Nelson ended any speculation about his intentions.
Under a cloudy sky the town saw the imposing, gun-spotted sides of the Egmont and Diadem ships of the line anchored at the mole head on springs, ready to swing their broadsides in murderous arcs of fire. Boats bristling with men, muskets, pistols and cutlasses headed into the harbour under Captain Towry, ready to tow the imprisoned British merchantmen to safety. The Corsican privateer charged with closing the harbour buzzed with excitement and scores of its armed compatriots clustered on the mole with primed muskets. But Nelson sent Captain Sutton of the Egmont ashore with a message to the Committee of Thirty. If the Corsicans interfered with the British operation Nelson would batter the town down about their ears. Sutton pulled out a watch. He gave the Corsicans fifteen minutes to answer before he began firing. Everyone in Corsica knew Nelson was not a man to be trifled with. The privateer held back, and the musketeers at the mole head scattered, some dumping their weapons in flight. Towry proceeded calmly about his business and sixty sail were brought out of Bastia.
That afternoon there was another show of strength. A privateer master or owner asked Nelson to help recover forty hogsheads of tobacco from a locked customs house. Nelson told him to demand access and sent an officer and men as an escort. A few minutes later the grateful owner was back with the keys to the customs house. The Corsican authorities, he said, went ‘as white as sheets, and said not a word’. Nelson probably exaggerated his success, but boasted that ‘Bastia . . . never was so quiet; not an armed man was found in the streets to the night of our embarkation’.74
Though Nelson regarded the army as too ‘well-dressed and powdered’, De Burgh had earned more respect from Elliot than had his predecessors, Stuart and Moore. He posted a hundred guards to keep the waterfront clear while the seamen loaded the ships and Nelson’s own soldiers held Elliot’s wharf. As some vessels put out with the first loads, others arrived, transports and men-of-war both. On the 15th it was the repaired Captain, to which Nelson and his signalling lieutenant returned with the commodore’s broad pendant. Stuart remained aboard as flag captain. The Southampton came in the next day, discharged the transports she had convoyed from Mortella Bay, and then left to collect the British garrison on Capraia. Her place at Bastia was eventually taken by the Sardine twenty-four, the Resolution cutter and the Excellent ship of the line, the last under the command of the hugely reassuring Captain Collingwood.75
Night and day the work went on. Men manhandled provisions, equipment, baggage and horses to the boats, rowed them to the ships and hoisted them aboard. The possessions of civilians, diplomats, soldiers and six hundred royalist Corsican and French had to be found a place. According to one ‘old Agamemnon’:
Many novel scenes [were] exhibited in Bastia at this time. Whole families might be seen moving along with their little stock of goods under the protection of British sailors or soldiers, while their enemies could do no more than look on with envy and vexation, and see themselves deprived of their intended plunder . . . It was nothing uncommon to see two or three of our ship’s crew marching along with a female under each arm, convoying them safely to the place of embarkation. Here you might see a group of men convoying a lot of furniture, while the family were carrying the lighter articles such as band-boxes, bundles and such-like gear.76
Just as Commodore Nelson thought he had everything under control a new shadow loomed. Despite the blockade of Leghorn, a company of French cavalry and several hundred of their Corsican auxiliaries slipped out of the port in bad weather, the advance guard of Bonaparte’s invasion by instalments. Under General Casalta they landed at Rogliano on Cape Corse on 18 October, and began marching towards Bastia, gathering volunteers along the way. When he heard about it, Elliot realised that even so small a force as this could fan simmering discontent and disrupt his evacuation. In an audience with the Committee of Thirty he warned that if the French advanced within six miles of the town he would consider destroying the citadel and part of the town. Messengers from the Corsicans in Bastia soon sped urgently northwards, begging Casalta to delay entering the town until the British had left, and delivering a letter from Elliot repeating his threats. The French would not be stayed, however, and tramped resolutely on. These were men inspired by a series of victories over the Austrians and their allies.77
At eleven at night on the 19th several shivering representatives of the Bastia committee clambered aboard the Captain ‘in great terror’ to plead with Elliot for ‘the last favour they had to request at our hands’. They had not only failed to halt the French but been threatened with retaliation if they allowed the British to leave. Now the committee implored Elliot to evacuate his men immediately, before the French arrived, lest the town be punished. Originally, Nelson had planned to withdraw the troops from the citadel in another two days, but he had already decided to speed up the operation. Though he is represented as having reacted unfavourably to the Corsican request until pressed by Elliot, he had contingency plans for an instant evacuation and agreed to implement them immediately. The Capraia garrison had come in earlier that day, and £200,000 of property and stores had been disembarked.
After days of cloud a heavy gale was whipping up and the night was dark. At midnight De Burgh’s men plugged the guns of the citadel with shot and blankets and removed their firing accessories, and marched out through the town towards Elliot’s wharf, a couple of field pieces rumbling along behind to deter any attackers. The eyes of the soldiers were fixed upon lights Nelson had hauled to the mastheads of his ships, but no one disputed their passage. ‘Every thing was conducted with perfect tranquillity,’ reported Elliot, who went ashore to lend Nelson a hand. ‘The whole town was as still as if it had not been inhabited, and the “Champ and Mars” was as quiet as it could have been a month before.’ At about one in the morning of the 20th, as the redcoats and their allies assembled at the landing place to wait their turn for the boats, three hundred of Casalta’s men penetrated the north of the town, spilling into the abandoned citadel and feverishly attempting to restore the crippled artillery. Even at this stage they wanted to bombard Nelson’s ships before they could get to sea.78
Out in the fading darkness, as dawn broke, Nelson and De Burgh waited on the wharf and saw every man embarked. It was a slow job. Dillon’s regiment, composed of French royalists and Germans, was embarked first but congested the boats with baggage, while a powerful wind blowing off the land made return journeys hard going. During the four hours the rearguard, the 51st Regiment, stood waiting on the landing, word of the French arrival reached Nelson, but the embarkation continued calmly and everyone and everything was loaded, including the two field pieces. The last of the fifteen hundred soldiers left the wharf at about six in the morning, and it was only then that Nelson and De Burgh took their places in the last boat. Nelson told Trevor that neither man nor stone scheduled to leave was left behind, and Elliot pronounced the operation ‘total and successful’, accomplished ‘without loss or accident of any kind’. No less exuberant, Jervis reported that although a few bulky casks of flour had been left in the citadel, he judged the evacuation of Corsica ‘without the loss of a man, killed or wounded’ to be ‘the most fortunate event of my service’.79
For several hours severe weather delayed sailing, trapping the ships at anchor, and De Burgh’s foresight in spiking the citadel’s guns proved to be a wise precaution. Happily, at noon conditions moderated, and before the French could bring their cannons to action the British slipped gently away and disappeared in rain and grey cloud. Nelson had brought them to Bastia and now he had taken them away.
Completing a model operation, he reached Porto Ferraio the same day. At first Elba had also been earmarked for evacuation, but at the eleventh hour Britain suddenly bowed to representations from Naples and ordered a stay of execution. For the time being the British would maintain a reduced presence in the area, based on Elba. Reading his new or
ders from Jervis, dated 17 October, Commodore Nelson took great pleasure in telling Elliot that the troops from Bastia could be disembarked at Porto Ferraio if he wished. Sir Gilbert was delighted, and began dreaming of holding Elba indefinitely as a British outpost, drawing supplies from Naples and rebuilding an Italian front against the French. His faith in British sea power remained unshaken. Nelson’s spirits also seem to have risen. He pointed out where a naval arsenal might be established, to replace the one being evacuated at Ajaccio, and envisaged returning to command the station after assisting Jervis to wind up the business of Corsica. Alerting Sir William Hamilton to the good news, Nelson promised to ‘endeavour to prove myself the same active officer which the world has said I am’.80
The most galling consequence of the government’s sudden reversal of orders, as far as Nelson was concerned, was the premature release of Capraia. The accusations levelled against his honour in Genoa and the rebuff of his recent overtures rankled like a severe toothache. On 20 October, as soon as he learned of the new policy, Nelson ordered Collingwood to Capraia with the Excellent, Egmont and Southampton and a detachment of troops under Logan. They were to reinstall the British garrison removed only a few days before. Collingwood found the Genoese powerfully entrenched in their old fortifications, however, and declining to assault the place a second time joined Nelson at Porto Ferraio. His commodore was satisfied that Collingwood had done his best, although he was still too angry with Genoa to allow the issue to rest. In a previously unnoticed letter, Nelson wrote to Brame on 26 October to notify him that Britain was, after all, keeping a force in the Mediterranean. He went on to predict that Jervis would meet and thrash a Spanish fleet then at large in the area, and settle the ‘account’ with Genoa. The scenario was a misrepresentation of British policy, but it certainly approximated Nelson and Jervis’s own preferences.81
More immediately, Nelson had to address the task in hand, and took his ships of the line to St Fiorenzo, where the commander-in-chief was removing the last vestiges of British rule. Corsica saw the back of the British at the beginning of November. After demolishing some fortifications, they sailed for Gibraltar in an armada of war and store ships and transports. Nelson went with them, for Jervis needed every capital ship he had. One of his detachments under Admiral Man had unaccountably decamped for England against orders, leaving Sir John woefully under strength at a time when Spain and France were open enemies and a large Spanish fleet under Don Juan de Langara y Huarte was in the Mediterranean. Langara had twenty-six sail of the line, twice as many as Jervis, and was seen off Cape Corse on 20 October, the very day Nelson brought the garrison out of Bastia. If the Spaniards had attacked Jervis’s cumbersome convoy lumbering to Gibraltar it would have been difficult to defend, but the admiral’s luck held and he reached his destination on 1 December without encountering the enemy.82
Jervis and Nelson had evacuated Corsica successfully, but there could be little real triumphalism. Retreat stuck in Nelson’s craw. ‘We are all preparing for an evacuation of the Mediterranean, a measure which I cannot approve,’ he informed his wife in October. ‘At home they know not what this fleet is capable of performing, any and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England in a private view, I lament in sackcloth and ashes our present orders, so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms, and of all fleets I ever saw I never saw one equal in point of officers and men to our present one, and with a commander-in-chief fit to lead them to glory.’83
His concern was not for the Corsicans, whom he thought ungrateful, the floundering Austrians, or most of the Italian states, which he reckoned simply gutless. ‘Italy has been lost by the fear of its princes,’ he said. ‘Had they expended half the money to preserve their territories, which they have paid the French for entering them, their countries would have been happy instead of being filled with present misery and diabolical notions of government.’ Rather he grieved for the prestige of Britain’s arms and for Naples, which had always tried to support him. The troops Naples had sent to Toulon in 1793; the guns and ammunition supplied for the siege of Bastia; the ships that sailed with Hotham in 1795; and the riviera flotillas. None particularly effective contributions, but all made in good heart. Nelson valued loyalty, whether of people to sovereigns, men to officers or officers to men. It implied commitment, obligation and trustworthiness. As Corsica disappeared in the wake of Jervis’s convoy Nelson experienced an unsettling sense of shame. His country, he believed, was acting dishonourably, abandoning the most steadfast of friends to its enemies. Even after hearing that Naples had turned an armistice with France into a peace, and it was easier to agree with Drake that Britain had ‘nothing more to do here’, he remained disturbed by what he was doing. ‘I yet hope the Cabinet may . . . change their opinion,’ he sighed as late as December. ‘It is not all we gain elsewhere which can compensate for our loss of honour.’84
The uncertainty about whether he was to leave or remain in the Mediterranean lingered for some time, bedevilling Nelson’s personal as well as professional relationships. He asked Brame to send messages to the women. To Madame Caffarena he would write if he had time, and for Adelaide there was a letter – possibly a farewell, but at least accompanied by the hint of future meetings. ‘Will you have the goodness to forward the enclosed, and write a line to say I hope soon to see my friend?’ he wrote to Brame. ‘In doing this you will very much oblige . . .’85
As far as anyone can now tell, his feelings for Adelaide did not run particularly deep, and never threatened his commitment to Fanny. It was, it appears, a friendship of convenience, satisfactory and durable and enriched by a working affection. But for Nelson it was always a temporary arrangement, to be dissolved by political circumstance. Adelaide may have thought it more. Her fidelity to Nelson was suspect, but he had maintained her for nearly two years, and whatever he said to her in his last letter it did not suggest finality. The mysterious little Ligurian continued to expect support and waited for his return.
10
Despite more than three years of Hood, Jervis, Nelson and a dozen fine captains Britain had lost her war in the Mediterranean.
The allies had disappointed, of course, but the British had also performed badly. Their sugar island strategy had cost them an army for little gain in the West Indies, and starved the Mediterranean of military resources. Nor was Nelson’s beloved navy free from blame. Hood’s failure to destroy the Toulon fleet in 1793 had been decisive, but the chances Hotham missed in 1794 and 1795, the failure to protect De Vins in 1795, and Man’s inexcusable run home in 1796 had all damaged opportunities. Nelson had been tireless, but his successes had also been interspersed with failures. He had failed to stop the French coastal trade in 1795, failed to prevent enemy gunboats from menacing the Austrians and failed to halt Bonaparte’s small-boat invasion of Corsica. As the wars with France would prove time and again, the Royal Navy might command the deeps, but it could not stifle the small traffic that used the shallows, hid behind headlands or in coves, or dashed short distances when shielded by darkness or poor weather.
In this battle between behemoth and leviathan, behemoth had won. The French republicans had recovered their balance, intimidated neutrals and overpowered enemies, leaving Britiain bereft of real support or purpose. If they did not drive the Royal Navy from the Mediterranean, they induced it to leave, and in October 1797 Bonaparte would force Austria to accept a humiliating peace that allowed him to fashion Genoa and Lombardy into satellite republics of France. Nelson’s work was entirely undone.
Britain’s evacuation of the Mediterranean was a bumbling performance, and in the seven months after October 1796 Nelson had to make three dangerous trips to effect what should have taken one. Shortly after Jervis reached Gibraltar with the first shipment in December, he was mulling over fresh orders. The fleet was to be stationed off Portugal, and the soldiers Jervis had just left in Porto Ferraio would be brought out after all and sent to Lisbon. Someone would have to go bac
k for them.
It was a testing mission now that Franco-Spanish fleets controlled the Mediterranean, for it involved penetrating deep into an enemy sea and plucking an isolated garrison from a place of danger. Transports and about a dozen small warships would have to be shepherded back to Gibraltar without any help from the main British fleet, and no ships of the line could be spared for the expedition, which must depend upon fast and elusive frigates. Weighing these and other considerations, Jervis did not take long to decide who would command. On 10 December, Commodore Nelson was ordered to transfer his broad pendant to La Minerve and sail for Elba.
He left five days later on the voyage interrupted by the seesaw battle off the coast of Spain, when he defeated three enemy frigates in the dead of night, only to lose his prizes and a prize crew to Spanish reinforcements the following day.86
Otherwise his return to Elba went smoothly, and he captured a French privateer off Sardinia as he went, the Maria ketch of six guns and sixty-eight men. Nelson and Cockburn reached Porto Ferraio the day after Christmas, just in time to join Fremantle in escorting the pretty Wynne sisters to a theatre which Lieutenant General De Burgh had done out for a grand seasonal ball. The commodore’s entrance was greeted with strains of ‘Rule Britannia!’ and ‘See the Conquering Hero’. Here Nelson was a star and he loved it. In the heady atmosphere three hundred people danced until three in the morning.
The Wynne girls were engaging company, and Nelson, Cockburn and Fremantle were with them again the next evening. Eugenia invariably found the sailors ‘kind and good humoured’, though Betsy thought Nelson ‘very civil and good natured’ but too quiet for her taste. As for the commodore, it was Elliot more than anyone else he wanted to see. ‘I long to see you,’ Nelson once wrote to him, ‘for your advice is a treasure.’ But Sir Gilbert was in Naples. Nelson contemplated following him there, and renewing his acquaintance with the Hamiltons, to whom he had written of his latest exploits the day after the ball, but finally settled for sending Fremantle of the Inconstant to collect the ex-viceroy.87