Drake, Nelson and Napoleon by Walter Runciman

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The laws of life are simple, but at the same time very terrible in
their consequences if ignored or disobeyed. What folly to imagine that
any great figure or great tragedy comes into existence by chance!
Napoleon was just as necessary to the world as was Cromwell. Both had
the righting of wrongs and the clearing away of the accumulation of
centuries of chaos and misgovernment, and it was not to be expected
that they could carry out the necessary reforms without making the
authors of such an intolerable state of things angry and resentful at
their iron methods of discipline. Napoleon and Cromwell possessed the
combined arts of war and statesmanship to a higher degree than any of
their contemporaries. Cromwell excelled Napoleon in professional
Christianity. The latter never paraded his ideas of religion, though
he acted on them silently and gave occasional expression to the
thoughts of his soul. Indeed, he was too much given to publicly
disavowing the very principles he believed in privately. This plan or
habit was said to be for the purpose of creating controversy. Be that
as it may, when the natural spirit moved him he would declare his
views in the most robust way. On one of many occasions he startled the
Council of State by reminding them that a man did not risk being
killed for a few pence a day or for a paltry distinction. "You must
speak to the soul," he declared, "to electrify the man." Another very
notable expression is here worth referring to, as it instances how
practical and human were his views. "The heart," said he, "warms the
genius, but in Pitt the genius withers the heart, which is a very
different thing"; and so it is that Cromwell and he were not
dissimilar in many of their attributes. Indeed, it is said that
Napoleon never tired of quoting or having quoted to him some striking
characteristic of Cromwell. We could hardly, with any degree of good
judgment, put Leslie the Covenanter or Sir Jacob Astley the Royalist,
or Nelson the matchless naval strategist and national hero, on a par
with either Cromwell or Napoleon. They are only here referred to in
connection with the two unequalled constructive statesmen and military
generals as representing a type of peculiarly religious men who have
occupied high military and naval positions in the service of the
State.

Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Blake in Cromwell's time, Nelson in
Napoleon's, were all fire-eating religious men, always asking favours
and guidance in their perilous undertakings from the great mystic
Power in whom they believed. Collingwood was a great admiral and a
Christian gentleman, who never mixed religion with hysterical or
dramatic flashes of quarterdeck language. He was ostentatious in
nothing, and seemed to observe a strictly decorous attitude. Nelson,
on the other hand, resembled a restless squirrel, always swift in his
instincts, with an enthusiasm which was contagious. In many ways he
did not adhere to what is called cricket in sporting phrase. He was
accustomed to say, "Never mind the justice or the impudence of this or
that, only let me succeed." Then he would proceed to ask the Almighty
in feverish zeal to aid him in the object he had in view.

He would scatter a profusion of curses about in relation to the
treatment of the Admiralty towards himself, or at his disappointment
in not getting to grips with the French fleet, and then proceed to ask
Lady Hamilton if they had a nice church at Merton, so that they may
set an example of goodness to the under-parishioners, and "admire the
pigs and poultry," etc. He finds on several occasions that a picture
of Emma is much admired by the French Consul at Barcelona, and feels
sure it would be admired by Bonaparte, and then he continues, "I love
you most dearly, and hate the French most damnably." Sometimes he said
he hated the French as the devil hated holy water, which at that time
was considered to be the orthodoxy of a true Briton. It was quite a
pro-British attitude to patronize the maker of kings who had kept the
world in awe for nearly a quarter of a century, by expecting him to
admire a portrait of a loose woman to whom he referred in the most
scathing manner while at St. Helena. Her reputation and Nelson's
connection with her seems to have been known to him, as was also her
connection with the Neapolitan Court. His indictment was terrible.

Nelson had a weary, anxious time on the Toulon station. He called it
his home, and said they were in fine fighting trim and wished to God
the ships were the same, but they were in a very dilapidated
condition, not fit to stand the bad weather they were sure to
encounter. The British Minister at Naples wished to send a Frenchman
who could be relied on with information as to the whereabouts of the
French fleet. Nelson replied that he would not on any account have a
Frenchman in the British fleet except as a prisoner. He would be
grateful to him for any information he could give, but not a Frenchman
would be allowed to come to him, and adds that "his mother hated the
French." He was enraged at the report spread by a fussy French Admiral
named M. la Touche-Treville, who was in command at Toulon. It was said
that he was sent to beat Nelson as he had done at Boulogne. But he was
shy about coming out and trying a tussle. Nelson said he was a
miscreant, a poltroon, and a liar. The Frenchman had boasted in a
publication that he had put the British fleet to flight. The British
Admiral took the charge so seriously to heart that he sent a copy of
the _Victory's_ log to the Admiralty to disprove the statement of the
lying Admiral la Touche, and in a letter to his brother Nelson says,
"You will have seen La Touche's letter of how he chased me, and how I
ran. I keep it; and by God if I take him, he shall eat it." La Touche
cheated Nelson of a sweet revenge by dying like a good Christian
before the outraged British Admiral could get hold of him. The
newspapers of France said he died of fatigue caused by walking so
often to the signal post at Sepet, to watch the British fleet; and
Nelson stated "that he was always sure that would be the death of him,
and that if he had come out to fight him it would have added ten years
on to his life." Poor Nelson was very sensitive when his professional
qualities were assailed. He thought, and thought rightly, that the
blockade at Toulon was an unparalleled feat of human patience and
physical endurance. He had only been out of his ship three times from
May 1803 to August 1805. We may write and speak about this wonderful
devotion to duty, but it is only if we take time to think of the
terrific things which the central figure who commanded, and the crews
of the fleet of rickety, worn-out, leaky baskets--proudly spoken of as
the "wooden walls of Old England"--had to contend with and actually
did, that we comprehend the vast strain and task of it all. It was
because Nelson was ever being reminded by some clumsy act of the
Admiralty or thoughtless, ignorant criticism on the part of the
politicians and civilian public generally that the work he and the men
under him were doing was not appreciated as it should be, that he gave
way to outbursts of violent resentment. But so far as the present
writer has been able to discover, his love of approbation was so
strong that an encouraging word of praise soon put him in love for the
time being with those whom he had lately cursed.

He never shrank from disobeying the instructions of whatever authority
was over him if his judgment led him to the conclusion that he would
serve his country better by disobedience and by following his own
judgment; whenever he was driven to do this he was right and those
above him were wrong, and in each case he was so conclusively right
that no authoritative power dare court-martial him, or even censure
his conduct, since the public believed more in him than in them. When
the spirit of well-balanced defiance was upon him, he seemed to say to
the public, to himself, and to those who were responsible for his
instructions, "Do you imagine yourselves more capable of judging the
circumstances, and the immeasurable difficulties surrounding them,
than I am, whose business it has been to watch minutely every changing
phase? Or do you think my love of country or glory so incomparably
inferior to yours that I would risk any harm coming to it, or to
myself and the men under me, if I was not sure of my ground? For what
other reason do you think I disobeyed orders? Do you suppose I did it
in order that some disaster should be the result? Or do you still
think that your plan, right or wrong, should have been carried out,
even though it would be accompanied with appalling consequences to
life and property? If these are your views, I wish to remind you that
I am the Indomitable Nelson, who will stand no damned nonsense from
you or from the enemy when I see that my country, or the interests
that I represent, are going to be jeopardized by your self-assertive
instructions, and I wish to intimate to you that there is only one way
of dealing with a Frenchman, and that is to knock him down when he is
an enemy. You have obviously got to learn that to be civil to a
Frenchman is to be laughed at, and this I shall never submit to." The
Admiralty censured Nelson for disobeying Lord Keith's orders and, as
they claimed, endangering Minorca, and also for landing seamen for the
siege of Capua, and told him "not to employ the seamen in any such way
in future." The Admiralty were too hasty in chastising him. He claimed
that his success in freeing the whole kingdom of Naples from the
French was almost wholly due to the employment of British sailors,
whose valour carried the day.

Nelson sent the First Lord a slap between the eyes in his best
sarcastic form. He said briefly, "I cannot enter into all the detail
in explanation of my motives which led me to take the action I did, as
I have only a left hand, but I may inform you that my object is to
drive the French to the devil, and restore peace and happiness to
mankind"; and he continues, "I feel I am fitter to do the action than
to describe it." And then he curtly and in so many words says to his
Chief, "Don't you be troubled about Minorca. I have secured the main
thing against your wish and that of Lord Keith, and you may be assured
that I shall see that no harm comes to the Islands, which seems to be
a cause of unnecessary anxiety to you." Incidentally, the expulsion of
the French from Naples and seating Ferdinand on the throne was, as I
have previously stated, not an unqualified success, nor was he
accurate in his statement that he had restored happiness to millions.
The success was a mere shadow. He had emancipated a set of villains.
Troubridge says they were all thieves and vagabonds, robbing their
unfortunate countrymen, selling confiscated property for nothing,
cheating the King and Treasury by pocketing everything that their
sticky fingers touched, and that their villainies were so deeply
rooted that if some steps were not taken to dig them out, the
Government could not hold together. Out of twenty millions of ducats
collected as revenue, only thirteen millions reached the Treasury, and
the King had to pay four ducats instead of one. Troubridge again
intimates to his superior that Ferdinand is surrounded with a nest of
the most unscrupulous thieves that could be found in all Europe. "Such
damned cowards and villains," he declared, "he had never seen or heard
of before."

IX

The French did not mince matters when their opportunity came. They,
too, regarded them as vermin, and treated them according to the
unrestrained edicts of the Reign of Terror, organized and
administered by their late compatriots Sardanapalus, Danton,
Maximilian Robespierre, and their literary colleague, the execrable
Marat, who, by the way, was expeditiously dispatched by the gallant
Charlotte Corday.[12]

This method of bestowing the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity was received by the Neapolitans with a frenzy from which
there sprang a demoniac retaliation. Societies were formed to carry
out the most atrocious crimes against the Neapolitan revolutionists,
whom the Royalists hated more than they did the French. The fishermen
and other miscreants came to a solemn conclusion that it was clearly
their duty as a Christian people to combine, and each choose one whom
they should privately guillotine when the opportunity offered. With
the idea of paying a high compliment to Troubridge, who had so
splendidly protected the Royalists, fought the French, and subdued
the revolutionists, they made him the recipient of a decapitated head
which had proudly sat on the shoulders of a revolutionist. This trophy
was actually sent to him with his basket of breakfast grapes. In
making the present the gallant fisherman conveyed his compliments to
the Admiral, and reminded him that it was a token of his high
appreciation of the Admiral's brilliant services to the Royalist
cause.

The Court was infested with traitors who would first carry out their
vengeance against their rebellious compatriots and then cunningly lay
the blame on those under whose protection they were. One of their
judges informed Troubridge that he must have a Bishop to excommunicate
some of the traitor priests before he could have them executed, and
the fine sailor, who was sick of the crafty devils and the task he had
been allocated to carry out, replied, "For the love of God hang the
damned rascals first, and then let the Bishop deal with them if he did
not think hanging was a sufficient degradation." Nothing in the annals
of history can surpass the effrontery of these intriguers, which
throws a lurid light on the class of administrators who associated
with the British nation and spilt the blood of the flower of our land
in bolstering up a government that was a disgrace and put all human
perfidy in the shade.

These allies of ours, who were joyously butchering and robbing each
other, demanded a British warship to take the priests to Palermo, so
that they might be degraded in a proper, Christian fashion and then
brought to Naples for execution. Troubridge was audaciously requested
to appoint a hangman (it may be he was asked to combine this with his
other naval duties), and knowing the fine sense of noble dignity in
the average sailor, we can easily imagine the flow of adjectives that
accompanied the refusal, and how he would relate the outrage to which
he had been subjected in quarterdeck language, that need not be here
repeated, to his superior officer, Admiral Nelson, who must have felt
the degradation of being selected to carry out as dirty a piece of
work as ever devolved upon a public servant. To fight for his King and
country was the joy of his soul, but to be selected as wet-nurse to
the kingdom of Naples and the dignitaries that were at the head of it
would have been an unbearable insult to his sense of proportion had it
not been for the fulsome flattery, to which he was so susceptible,
which was adroitly administered by the ladies of the Court, headed by
the Queen and supplemented by the wife of Sir William Hamilton.

There is always some fatal weakness about a great man that lures him
into littleness, and this was an overwhelming tragedy in Nelson's
career. The approbation of men was gratefully received and even asked
for, but the adoration of women reduced him to helplessness. He was
drugged by it, and the stronger the doses, the more efficacious they
were. They nullified the vision of the unwholesome task he was set to
carry out until his whole being revolted against the indignity of it,
when he would pour out his wrath to Lady Hamilton as he did at the
time when Troubridge would report to him his own trials. No doubt this
caused him to realize the chaotic condition of public affairs, for he
writes to the lady that "politics are hateful to him, and that
Ministers of Kings are the greatest scoundrels that ever lived." The
King of Naples is, he suspects, to be superseded by a prince who has
married a Russian Archduchess. This, presumably, had been arranged by
the "great political scoundrels." He stands loyally by Ferdinand, but
soon all the work of that part of his life that gave him socially so
much pleasure and professionally so much misery is to be left for
evermore, and his great talents used in other and higher spheres.

He had retaken Naples from the French, who had set up the Parthenopean
Republic in 1799, and placed the tyrant King on his throne again;
after a few more chequered years a treaty of neutrality was signed
between France and Naples, which was treacherously broken by Naples.
Ferdinand had to fly to Sicily, the French troops entered the capital,
and Bonaparte, who had been marching from one victory to another,
cleared out deep-rooted abuses and introduced reforms wherever he
could. He had become the terror and the enemy of the misgoverning
monarchs of that period, and the French nation had proclaimed him
Emperor in 1804. He placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples
in February 1806; Joseph ruled with marked moderation and
distinction, sweeping away much of the foul canker of corruption and
introducing many beneficent reforms during his two years of kingship.
He then, much against his own wishes, became King of Spain, and was
succeeded by his brother-in-law, Prince Joachim Murat, the dashing
cavalry officer, whose decorative exterior awed friend and foe, and
helped to win many a battle. His reign lasted from 1808 until 1815,
and was no less distinguished than that of Joseph's. The fall of the
Napoleonic regime was followed by the fall of Murat, and the
despicable and treacherous Ferdinand became again the king, and
brought back with him the same tyrannical habits that had made his
previous rule so disastrous to the kingdom and to himself. No
whitewasher, however brilliant and ingenious, can ever wipe out the
fatal action of the British Government in embarking on so
ill-conceived a policy as that of supporting the existence of a
bloodsucking government, composed of a miscreant ruling class headed
by an ignoble king, all living on the misery and blood of a
semi-civilized population. It is a nauseous piece of history, with
which, under sagacious administration, we should never have been
connected.

The main idea was to humble the pride of France, that thenceforth
there might be peace in Europe. The Neapolitan revolutionists believed
that the French intention was to set up a free government and deliver
them from an unbearable despotism. Quite naturally, the Court took an
opposite view in believing that it foreshadowed deportation, so they
lost no time in proclaiming it to be conquest and merciless plunder.
Nelson urged the vacillating King to advance against the French, to
trust in God's blessing being bestowed upon him, his army, and his
cause, and to die like a hero, sword in hand, or lose his throne. The
King, always dauntless in the absence of danger, replied that he would
do this, trusting in God and Nelson. His Majesty, in tickling the
Admiral's susceptible spot by associating his name with that of the
Deity, doubtless made a good shot, and had Nelson's sense of humour
been equal to his vanity, he might not have received the oily
compliment with such delightful complacency.

We can imagine the scorn with which Troubridge would have received the
potentate's reply had he given the same advice as Nelson. It is highly
probable that had it been given on the quarterdeck of his ship, the
King would have been treated to a vocabulary that would have impressed
him with the necessity of scrambling quickly over the side. Nelson, it
is stated, turned the French out of Naples, and they were subsequently
overpowered by a plan put in force by Nelson and Troubridge, and
carried into effect by men from the fleet. Captain Hallowell was
ordered to proceed to Civita Vecchia and Castle St. Angelo to offer
terms of capitulation. He reported the position to Troubridge, who
ordered a squadron in command of Captain Louis to proceed and enforce
the terms. The French, on the other hand, offered terms, but
Troubridge, like Drake on another occasion, said that he had no time
to parley, that they must agree to his terms or fight. The French
Ambassador at Rome argued that the Roman territory belonged to the
French by conquest, and the British commander adroitly replied "that
it was his by reconquest." The inevitable alternative was
impressive--capitulation. This was arranged, and the Roman States came
under the control of the victors. Captain Louis proceeded in his
cutter up the Tiber and planted the British colours at Rome, becoming
its governor for a brief time. The naval men had carried out, by
clever strategy and pluck, an enterprise which Sir James Erskine
declined to undertake because of the insurmountable difficulties he
persisted in seeing. General Mack was at the head of about 30,000
Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did
not prevent them from being annihilated by 15,000 French, when General
Championnet evacuated Rome. The King entered with all the swagger of
an Oriental potentate. The Neapolitans followed the French to
Castellana, and when the latter faced up to them they stampeded in
disordered panic. Some were wounded, but few were killed, and the
King, forgetting in his fright his pledged undertaking to go forth
trusting in "God and Nelson," fled in advance of his valiant soldiers
to the capital, where they all arrived in breathless confusion.
General Mack had been introduced to Nelson by the King and Queen, the
latter exhorting him to be on land what the Admiral had been on sea.

Nelson seems to have formed an adverse opinion of Mack, who was
extolled by the Court as the military genius who was to deliver Europe
from the thraldom of the French. He had expressed the view that the
King and Queen's incomparable general "could not move without five
carriages," and that _he_ "had formed his opinion" of him, which was
tantamount to saying that Mack was both a coward and a traitor.
Perhaps it was undue consideration for the feelings of Caroline,
sister to the late Marie Antoinette, that caused him to restrain his
boiling rage against this crew of reptiles, who had sold every cause
that was entrusted to their protection.

Nelson was infatuated with the charms of Caroline, and as this astute
lady knew how to handle him in the interests of the Neapolitan Court,
he reciprocated her patronage by overlooking misdeeds that would,
under different circumstances, have justified him in blowing swarms of
her noble subjects out of existence. "I declare to God," he writes,
"my whole study is how to best meet the approbation of the Queen." An
open door and hearty reception was always awaiting their Majesties of
Sicily on board Nelson's flagship when they found it necessary to fly
from the wrath of their downtrodden subjects or the aggressive
invasions of the French troops. The anxiety of Nelson in conveying
them to their Sicilian retreat was doubly increased by the vast
treasure they never neglected to take with them, and neither the
sources from which it came nor the means of spending it gave trouble
to their consciences. The British Government, always generous with
other person's money, fed these insufferable royal personages by
bleeding the life's blood out of the British public, though it is
fair to say that the Government did not carry out to the full the
benevolent suggestions Nelson consistently urged in their behalf. "His
heart was always breaking" at some act of parsimony on the part of the
Government in so tardily giving that which he pleaded was an urgent
necessity for them to have. He frankly avowed that he would prefer to
resign if any distinction were to be drawn between loyalty to his
rightful sovereign and that of his Sicilian Majesty, who was the
faithful ally of his King. The solemn audacity of this statement
reveals a mind so far fallen to pieces by infatuation that it has lost
the power of discrimination.

It will be remembered that this gracious ally promised Nelson that he
would go forth at the head of his troops and conquer or die, and then
scampered off in front of his army through Rome to Naples, and, after
a few days' concealment from the mob, secretly bundled into boats with
his retinue on a stormy night of great peril, embarked on the
Admiral's ship, and sailed for Palermo.

Lady Hamilton is credited with planning (with heroic skill) means by
which the Royal Family could be taken to the shore, where Nelson was
to receive and convoy them in barges to the _Vanguard_. Lady Hamilton
had explored a subterranean passage which led from the palace to the
beach, and pronounced it a fairly safe and possible means of exit. The
plan apparently succeeded, and the royal party, after a few days'
precautionary stay in the Bay of Naples, were conveyed in safety to
Palermo, notwithstanding the hurricane that was encountered and only
weathered by a perfection of seamanship that was unequalled in our
naval and merchant services at that period of our trying history. The
voyage was not made without tragedy, for the youngest of the princes
became ill, and as it is always inevitable to attach a heroine to
circumstances that are sensational (when there is one at hand), their
Majesties in their grief fixed on her who had braved the perils of
investigating the possibilities of the subterranean tunnel which had
proved a safe though hazardous passage for the conveyance of
themselves and their vast treasure. Nor do they appear to have been
unmindful of her devotion to themselves during the storm, which was
the severest that Nelson said he had ever experienced--though this is
a platitude, as sailors are always prone to regard the last storm as
the most terrific of all! But that it was severe there can be no
doubt. We may be assured that the royal parents were not in a
condition to give succour to their stricken son, so he was vouchsafed
to pass beyond the veil in the arms of Lady Hamilton, who had bravely
defied the tempest and behaved with a compassion that must always
stand to her credit.

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