The Life of Nelson Volume I Part 19

And this is not the less true, because Nelson was in the general a man of far sounder judgment and keener insight than Keith, or because his intuitions in the particular instance were more accurate, as they possibly were. He defended his course on the ground, so frequently and so erroneously taken, that his intentions were right. "I am so confident," he wrote to the Admiralty, "of the uprightness of my intentions for his Majesty's service, and for that of his Sicilian Majesty, which I consider as the same, that, with all respect, I submit myself to the judgment of my superiors." Four years later, in 1803, he used the following singular expressions concerning his conduct at this period: "I paid more attention to another sovereign than my own; therefore the King of Naples' gift of Bronte to me, if it is not now settled to my advantage, and to be permanent, has cost me a fortune, and a great deal of favour which I might have enjoyed, and jealousy which I should have avoided. I repine not on those accounts.

I did my duty, to the Sicilifying my own conscience, and I am easy."[89] "As I have often before risked my life for the good cause,"

he told his old friend the Duke of Clarence, "so I with cheerfulness did my commission: for although a military tribunal may think me criminal, the world will approve my conduct." With such convictions, he might, if condemned, as he almost inevitably must have been, have met his fate with the cheerfulness of a clear conscience; but no military tribunal can possibly accept a man's conscience as the test of obedience.

The Admiralty, who had sent Keith out knowing that St. Vincent, after three arduous years, meant soon to retire, could not of course acquiesce in Nelson's thus overriding the man they had chosen to be his commander-in-chief. "Their Lordships do not, from any information now before them, see sufficient reason to justify your having disobeyed the orders you had received from your Commanding Officer, or having left Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked, without having any naval force to protect it." To this measured rebuke was added some common-sense counsel upon the pernicious practice of jeopardizing the _personnel_ of a fleet, the peculiar trained force so vitally necessary, and so hard to replace, in petty operations on sh.o.r.e. "Although in operations on the sea-coast, it may frequently be highly expedient to land a part of the seamen of the squadron, to co-operate with and to a.s.sist the army, when the situation will admit of their being immediately re-embarked, if the squadron should be called away to act elsewhere [as Keith had called it], or if information of the approach of an enemy's fleet should be received,--yet their Lordships by no means approve of the seamen being landed to form a part of an army to be employed in operations at a distance from the coast, where, if they should have the misfortune to be defeated, they might be prevented from returning to the ships, and the squadron be thereby rendered so defective, as to be no longer capable of performing the services required of it; and I have their Lordships' commands to signify their directions to your Lordship not to employ the seamen in like manner in future."

It was evident that the Admiralty did not fully share Nelson's attachment to the royal house of Naples, nor consider the service of the King of the Two Sicilies the same as that of the King of Great Britain. Earl Spencer's private letter, while careful of Nelson's feelings, left no room to doubt that he was entirely at one with his colleagues in their official opinion. Nelson winced and chafed under the double rebuke, but he was not in a condition to see clearly any beams in his own eye. "I observe with great pain that their Lordships see no cause which could justify my disobeying the orders of my commanding officer, Lord Keith;" but the motives he again alleges are but the repet.i.tion of those already quoted. He fails wholly to realize that convictions which would justify a man in going to a martyr's fate may be wholly inadequate to sap the fundamental military obligation of obedience. "My conduct is measured by the Admiralty, by the narrow rule of law, when I think it should have been done by that of common sense. I restored a faithful ally by breach of orders; Lord Keith lost a fleet by obedience against his own sense. Yet as one is censured the other must be approved. Such things are." As a matter of fact, as before said, it was by departing from St. Vincent's orders that Keith lost the French fleet. Nor did Nelson's mind work clearly on the subject. Thwarted and fretted as he continually was by the too common, almost universal, weakness, which deters men from a bold initiative, from a.s.suming responsibility, from embracing opportunity, he could not draw the line between that and an independence of action which would convert unity of command into anarchy. "Much as I approve of strict obedience to orders, yet to say that an officer is never, for any object, to alter his orders, is what I cannot comprehend." But what rational man ever said such a thing? "I find few think as I do,--but to obey orders is all perfection! What would my superiors direct, did they know what is pa.s.sing under my nose? To serve my King and to destroy the French I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring, and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order." There is so much that is sound in these words, and yet so much confusion might arise in applying them, that scarcely any stronger evidence could be given that each case must rest on its own merits; and that no general rule can supplant the one general principle of obedience, by which alone unity and concentration of effort, the great goal of all military movement, can be obtained.

During this period of agitation and excitement, Nelson's health did not show the favorable symptoms that usually attended a call to exertion. Much may be attributed to a Mediterranean summer, especially after the many seasons he had pa.s.sed in that sea; but it can readily be believed that such exceptional responsibilities as he had just a.s.sumed could not but tell, even upon his resolute and fearless temper. "I am really sorry," wrote Troubridge to him, from the siege of St. Elmo, "to see your Lordship so low-spirited, all will go well;"

and a few days later, "Your Lordship must endeavour to fret as little as possible--we shall succeed. His Majesty's arrival will relieve your Lordship; and if he punishes the guilty, the people will be happy."

The day after he had refused to obey Keith's order, he wrote to him, "I am truly so very unwell that I have not the power of writing so much as I could wish;" and the next day, to the Admiralty, he makes the same excuse, adding, "I am writing in a fever, and barely possible to keep out of bed." "My dear friend," he tells Locker, "I am so ill that I can scarcely sit up; yet I will not let the courier go off without a.s.suring you that all your kindnesses to me are fresh in my memory.... May G.o.d Almighty grant you, my revered friend, that health and happiness which has never yet been attained by your affectionate, grateful friend, Nelson." It cannot but be surmised that he did not feel that profound conviction of right, which had sustained him on previous occasions. The disquiet indicated resembles rather that attending the uncertainties of the Nile campaign. As Colonel Stewart noticed, two years later, "With him mind and health invariably sympathized."

FOOTNOTES:

[81] That is, in person.

[82] The commandant of St. Elmo signed on the 3d Messidor, June 21. Ruffo, with the Russian and Turkish representatives, had already signed. The paper was then sent to Foote, who signed and returned to Ruffo on the 23d of June. The "Foudroyant" came in sight on the afternoon of the 24th.

[83] All italics in the quotations from this despatch are the author's.

[84] Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 511. Author's italics.

[85] Nicolas, vol. iii p. 406.

[86] Mr. Pryse Lockhart Gordon, who was in Palermo in January, 1799, tells the following anecdote of Lady Hamilton. He had been dining at the amba.s.sador's, and after dinner a Turkish officer was introduced. In the course of the evening he boasted that he had put to death with his own sword a number of French prisoners. "'Look, there is their blood remaining on it!' The speech being translated, her Ladyship's eye beamed with delight, and she said, 'Oh, let me see the sword that did the glorious deed!' It was presented to her; she took it into her fair hands, covered with rings, and, looking at the encrusted Jacobin blood, kissed it, and handed it to the hero of the Nile. Had I not been an eye-witness to this disgraceful act, I would not have ventured to relate it." (Gordon's Memoirs, vol. i. p, 210.) The author, also, would not have ventured to adduce it, without first satisfying himself, by inquiry, as to the probable credibility of Mr. Gordon, and likewise testing his narrative. It bears marks of the inaccuracy in details to which memory is subject, but the indications of general correctness are satisfactory.

[87] Nelson to Acton, November 18, 1799. (Nicolas.)

[88] Much confusion has been introduced into the times, when Keith's several orders were received by Nelson, by the fact that the original of this private letter to Earl Spencer is dated the 19th (Nicolas, vol. vii.

p. clx.x.xv); while the secretary, copying it into the letter-book, wrote July 13th. (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 408.) Nicolas considered the former correct, probably because it came last into his hands. The author considers the 13th correct, because the official letter to Keith bears that date, and reads, "I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's letter of June 27." (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 408.)

The date of Troubridge's marching against Capua is similarly brought into doubt by these letters. The author believes it to have been July 13 or 14, from another official letter to Keith of the 13th. (Nicolas, vol. iii. p.

404.) "Captains Troubridge and Hallowell ... march against Capua to-morrow morning." The odd Sea-Time of that day, by which July 13 began at noon, July 12, of Civil Time, also causes confusion; writers using them indiscriminatingly. The capitulation of St. Elmo was certainly signed on July 12. (Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 294.)

[89] Nicolas, vol. v. p. 160.

END OF VOL. I.