2G6 THK PART TO BK TAKEN CHAP. XI. feeling aiul attitude of Lyons to- wards his chief t his resist- ance to Dundas en- couraged by a Secretary of State. ill its uatuve, to be altogether controllaLle by mere autliority. To resist it, a comtnander would need all the support that could be given him by an officer serving next under him. Lyons was the second in command, lie, however, by this lime, had certainly placed himself in a state of determined antagonism to his chief. Devoting his energies, with all that fieiy zeal of which we have spoken, to the business rif the invasion, he seems to have lost his power of appreciating the less stirring duties which devolved upon Dundas; and (apparently) by contrasting his own ceaseless activity with the seeming quietude of the Vice- Admiral, he wrought himself into a state of mind and feeling Avhich was hardly compatible with loyalty towards his chief. Lyons himself, I think, would not have said that he was loyal to Dundas ; but rather would have insisted that, because of the lukewarmness and obstructive tendency which he imputed to his chief, dis- loyalty had become a duty ; and, indeed, at the time we speak of, this spirit of resistance to the naval Commander-in-Chief had M'on a strange sanction from home.* The letters which reached London from the fleet and from the camp were so charged with accounts of the supposed torpor or wilful ob- structivcness of Dundas, and of the devoted
- The sanction here sjiokeu of was contained in a letter from
the Secretary of State (see the next note), which had been despatched on the 9th of October, tlioiigh it had not yet reached its destination.
