which all the artifice of French intrigue could not affect; and the co-operation of the Minotaur, stationed off Leghorn, was at all times worthy of her commander’s professional character.
Towards the end of Jan. 1799, the arrival of a very valuable convoy from England was hourly looked for, and the British Minister accordingly presented a note on the subject to the Grand Duke. On the 28th, the principal merchants decided that the fleet, instead of entering the port, should be placed under the protection of the Minotaur, and remain in the roads until Captain Louis could devise further means for its security. The threats of Salicetti, Envoy from the French Directory[1], who declared openly that Tuscany would be revolutionized in the ensuing Lent; and the suspicious conduct of the republican generals, then in the neighbourhood of Florence, kept the Duchy at that time in a very agitated state; and, as Mr. Wyndham added in his note, “there was reason to believe, that if the French had not yet attacked the government, it was only because they waited the arrival of this rich convoy, in order to ensure its capture.”
During these proceedings, the King of Sardinia and his family, justly apprehensive of French treachery, had arrived at Florence, and were lodged in one of the Grand Duke’s palaces, about a mile without the city. His Majesty, driven from Piedmont, intended to seek an asylum at Cagliari; and afterwards proceeded thither in a Danish frigate, escorted by a British man of war[2]. Mr. Wyndham, in his letters to Nelson, gives an account of the various circumstances that had preceded and attended this transaction:– from those letters we make the following extracts:–
- ↑ Salicetti was a native of Corsica, a disciple of Robespierre, a Member of the Council of 500, and an avowed enemy of Italy.
- ↑ See Vol. I. p. 839.
