manity, was ‘a ruse de guerre, and not quite justifiable’—an artful device to gain time to get his ships out of their perilous position (Nicolas, iv. 360). If so, he shamefully neglected his opportunity. In the evening, when the Danish envoy returned from Sir Hyde Parker, his ships were still in the King's Channel.
On 5 May, while the fleet was lying in Kjöge Bay, Nelson was appointed commander-in-chief, in succession to Parker, and immediately made the signal to prepare for sea. It was well known that he and Parker held different opinions about the course to be pursued, and that Nelson had long been chafing at the delay in going up the Baltic. On the 7th the fleet weighed, and on the 12th was in the Gulf of Finland, when Nelson learnt, to his annoyance, that the Russian fleet, which had been icebound at Revel, had succeeded in getting out on 3 May. He considered that but for Parker's extraordinary hesitation it would have been at the mercy of the English. But in fact the death of the tsar on 24 March had completely altered the situation; and Nelson, finding that force could now effect nothing, that affairs had entered the domain of diplomacy, and that his stay in the Gulf of Finland would be a hindrance to its course, drew down the Baltic, arriving on 24 May at Rostock. He had for some weeks been in poor health; on 12 May he wrote to his friend Davison: ‘It is now sixteen days that I have not been able to get out of my cabin;’ and though this may perhaps have been a conventional phrase, Colonel Stewart wrote of him while at Rostock: ‘His health was not good, and his mind was not at ease; with him mind and health invariably sympathised.’ He was disgusted with the turn affairs had taken; disgusted at the delay which had prevented his crushing the Russians; disgusted, too, at the non-observance by the Danes of the terms of the armistice; and now that there was no longer any probability of active service, he was depressed by absence from Lady Hamilton, who, a few weeks before he sailed for the Baltic, had made him the father of a daughter, whom he had only just seen.
On 18 June Nelson gladly bade farewell to the fleet in Kjöge Bay, returned to Yarmouth in the Kite brig, and joined the Hamiltons in London. His own services during the campaign were rewarded with the title of viscount; but neither then nor afterwards was there any direct recognition of the battle of Copenhagen, for which, as he always maintained, he and his brothers in arms ought to have been thanked by parliament, and by the city of London. The omission caused him much annoyance, and more than a year after (8 Nov. 1802) he declined to dine with the lord mayor and sheriffs while the wrong done to ‘those who fought under his command’ remained unredressed.
Within a few weeks after his return from the Baltic, Nelson was appointed to command the defence flotilla on the south-east coast, and on 27 July he hoisted his flag on board the Unité frigate at Sheerness. It was reported that a large army and a great number of flat-bottomed boats were collected at Boulogne, Ostend, Blankenberg, &c., and that an invasion of England by a force of at least forty thousand men was imminent. Nelson before long discovered that this intelligence was grossly exaggerated; that, whatever was intended, there were not more than fifty or sixty boats at Boulogne, and perhaps sixty or seventy at Ostend and Blankenberg, which might carry fifty or sixty men apiece (ib. iv. 434–57). With such limited transport invasion was clearly out of the question; and, having provided for security, Nelson proceeded to guard against even insult. On the night of 15–16 Aug. he attempted to bring away or burn the flotilla in the harbour of Boulogne. But the French boats were chained together, many were aground, and as soon as they were boarded such a heavy musketry fire was opened on them from the shore that the assailants could not stay even to set them alight, and were obliged to retire with very severe loss. Other projects of annoying the enemy were discussed, but found equally impracticable on account of shoal water, strong tides, and heavy batteries; and by the end of September the peace seemed to be agreed on.
With the cessation of arduous work returned Nelson's desire to be on shore; it was not without grumbling and bitter railing that he consented to retain the command till the peace was concluded; and as soon as he was free he sought for rest and solace in the society of Lady Hamilton and her husband. He had already commissioned Lady Hamilton to look out for a country house. She had selected one at Merton, in Surrey, which Nelson had bought only a few weeks before. The next eighteen months were spent with the Hamiltons, for the most part at Merton, or at Hamilton's house in Piccadilly, the household expenditure being divided between them. During this time Nelson and Emma were necessarily much in each other's company, and at last Hamilton, feeling himself neglected, feeling that his comfort was sacrificed to Nelson's, and his desire for repose to his wife's love of gaiety, wrote her, after many altercations with her on the subject, a
