Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/336

322 NELSON In the winter of 1795-96 Nelson was employed in cutting off the supplies of the French army on the Italian seaboard ; and, had he been well seconded by the Austrian generals, Napoleon would not have possessed the means of beginning his career of Italian conquest. Soon after this he became a commodore ; and before long he had again performed one of those great feats of daring and skill which ordinary commanders would have deemed impossible. Spain, drawn into her old alliance with France, had declared war in 1796; and on 13th February 1797 a Spanish fleet met one of the English, a few miles off Cape St Vincent. Though the enemy had twenty-seven ships of the line, and the British force was only fifteen, its admiral, Jervis, did not hesitate ; and, skilfully employing a well- known manosuvre, he broke the hostile line, cutting off nine ships. The Spanish admiral, however, endeavoured to rejoin this detachment by wheeling round his van; and the evolu tion might have been successful had not Nelson, placed at the British rear, immediately abandoned his own line, and, disregarding his superior s orders, assailed with his single ship the advancing squadron. This audacious movement threw him in the way of three first and three second rates ; and, though the " Captain " was ably seconded by the three nearest ships of the British line, Nelson was engaged for more than half an hour with a force immeasurably superior to his own. Yet British discipline and valour triumphed ; the Spanish commander drew off beaten, and the " Captain " boarded and took two ships, each larger and more powerful than herself, Nelson leading his exulting crew in person to the cry of "Westminster Abbey or Victory." For this extraordinary passage of arms Nelson received the order of the Bath and was made an admiral, his splendid success and skilful promptitude having effaced, even in professional minds, his disregard of the rules of the service. During the following months he was engaged in operations against Spain and her colonies ; and he lost an arm in an attack on Santa Cruz, a place famous for one of Blake s victories. The time had now arrived when his genius and skill were to appear in full force in an inde pendent command. In May 1798 he was despatched by Jervis now Lord St Vincent to intercept a great French armament, which, under the guidance of Bonaparte, was intended to reach Egypt and to threaten India. His squadron, however, having been crippled in a gale, the hostile fleet escaped from Toulon and reached Alexandria on 1st July, the British admiral, who had made Aboukir on the 28th June, having just missed it. This misadven ture deceived Nelson, who believed that the enemy was still at sea ; and it was not until he had made a circuit by Crete to the coasts of Sicily, and back again to the shores of Greece, that he heard how the French had made good their landing. He set off from the Gulf of Coron, though his intelligence was a rumour only; and on the 1st August the enemy was descried. His plan of attack was quickly formed, and it was marked by his wonted insight and skill. The French fleet lay in front of the roads of Aboukir, the rear supported by coast batteries, the centre and van more out at sea, but composed of new and formidable ships ; and, as shoals stretched between it and the neighbouring shore, its admiral, Brueys, believed that no foe would thread the way between and attack from that side. Nelson, however, a dexterous pilot from boyhood, saw that with fine steering the feat was possible ; and he directed part of his fleet to assail the enemy to the landward through this intricate passage, while the remaining part assailed from the seaward. As evening fell his preparations were complete ; the shoal stopped only one of the British ships, and before an hour had passed his divided line had encom passed more than half the French fleet. The issue of the battle was never doubtful ; the French, indeed, fought with heroic courage, but their rear and centre, placed between two fires, were gradually overpowered and destroyed ; and their van, at anchor, like all their line, was either unable or perhaps unwilling to make sail and assist their consorts. The flagship of Brueys, the huge " Orient," blew up towards midnight in a volcano of flame, and by daybreak on the 2d the victory was complete. Of thirteen French ships two only escaped, and it should be added that the British fleet, though equal in numbers to that of the enemy, was wholly inferior in real force. The British seventy-fours were no match for the new and magnificent French eighties ; and Nelson s flagship, the "Vanguard," had scarcely more than half the strength of the " Orient." This great victory perhaps Nelson s masterpiece marks a new epoch in British naval history. The superior ity, indeed, of the English fleets had been proved from the beginning of the war, especially on June 1, 1794, and the Revolution had injured the marine of France. But it was not until the Battle of the Nile the name given to Nelson s triumph that the navy of England attained its complete ascendency, and that it became the terror of even its bravest enemies. This change was due in the main to Nelson, and unquestionably the dread his name inspired was the principal cause that, years afterwards, Napoleon s plan of invading England failed. From this period, too, the whole naval service, so to speak, was animated by a new spirit, and deeds of daring were done by men of the rising school which the Hawkes and Ansons would have never dreamt of. It is painful to turn from this blaze of glory to notice a dark passage in Nelson s career. The Battle of the Nile having again combined the Continent against revolutionary France, for Bonaparte and his army seemed lost, the court of Naples was drawn into the war ; and, in the struggle that ensued, the king and queen were compelled to take refuge in Palermo. They soon, however, had returned to the capital, Suwaroff having driven the French froni Italy ; and they entered Naples on the faith of a treaty, which amnestied their revolted subjects. Nelson, who still held his Mediterranean command, and had taken the royal family under his protection, nevertheless declared the capitulation null, allowed the vindictive creatures of the court to work their will on disarmed enemies, and, hurrying on himself the trial and sentence, gave his sanction to what can be only called the judicial murder of Caraccioli, the admiral of the Neapolitan fleet, who had served in the " rebel " cause only under compulsion. History must severely condemn these acts, but there is reason to believe that they were not caused, as is commonly supposed, by female prompting ; and we must not forget that, in that age, political passion ran furiously high, and often broke down all moral barriers, that it was the age of the assassinations at Rastadt, of the crime of Vincennes, of the execution of Ney. Nelson remained on his station after this tragedy ; he shared in some of the short-lived triumphs of the allies in 1799-1800, had the satisfaction of hearing of the capture of the two ships which had escaped from Aboukir, and gave effectual aid in the siege of Malta, taken by Bonaparte on his way to Egypt. By the winter of 1800 he was again in England, having received a peerage for the Battle of the Nile, and the well-merited rank of vice- admiral, and greeted by his country with general acclaim. He was called before long to perform another service, in which his great qualities became again manifest. The victory of Marengo, won by Bonaparte after his extraordin ary return from Egypt, having broken up the coalition against France, and inclined the czar to a French alliance, the Northern courts, with Denmark at their head, renewed the armed neutrality of 1780 ; and, in the first months of 1801, a British fleet was fitted out for the Baltic to put an