Nelson (110 page)

A fortnight before the French invaded Leghorn, Adelaide had a visitor. The
Inconstant
frigate was moored in Leghorn roads for a refit, and the incorrigible Captain Fremantle was again at large, looking for sex. ‘Can’t find Madalina,’ he scribbled in his diary on 15 June. But the next day he had more success at Bagno di Pisa. ‘Went to Pisa baths,’ he wrote. ‘Called on Adelaide, who was quite recovered and looked well.’ Nine days later, within twenty-four hours of definite news of the French advance reaching Leghorn, Adelaide was in Fremantle’s frigate. Although Adelaide was Nelson’s lover, and Fremantle his friend, it is difficult not to suspect that the meeting was a ‘professional’ one. At any rate, she seems to have retired quickly upon the arrival of the Wynnes and Mrs Pollard. ‘Adelaide came off in the evening,’ wrote Fremantle.
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Whether two-timing or not, these meetings were brought to an abrupt end when Fremantle was suddenly recalled to duty. If Adelaide made her way back to Pisa on the 26th she would have found the road full of Bonaparte’s soldiers marching south.

Sent back to his station on 18 June, Nelson was in Genoa when he heard of the thrust at Leghorn, wrestling with different facets of the enemy’s successes. He was trying to establish packet services between Leghorn, Corsica and Spain, halt Genoa’s slide into hostility, and deal with more neutral complaints about his ships. The republic’s coast had become a hostile shore, with only the city of Genoa itself a safe haven for British vessels, and that seethed with Jacobin influence, fanned by a new and bellicose representative of the French Directory, Monsieur Guillaume-Charles Faypoult, the minister plenipotentiary.

Nelson met this fresh round of neutral complaints without the benefit of a strong defender on the spot. Drake had gone to Vienna, and only the British consul, Joseph Brame, manned this threatened outpost. No one had much time for Brame. Nelson thought him ‘a poor creature, and more of a Genoese than an Englishman’, and Sir John Jervis, who had been responsible for his appointment in the first place, said he was dishonest and confused. The admiral suspected Brame of corruptly inflating the prices of provisions supplied to the
British fleet to benefit some accomplice, and growled that the consul was ‘in a state of imbecility during his best days’ and ‘upon his deathbed would take money from Swede, Dane or the devil’.
⁵

Poor Brame, whose wavering scrawl presaged imminent physical collapse, was not the best man to rescue Nelson from the accusations of neutrals. He also knew that French influence in Genoa was increasing while his own wilted, and counselled moderation in all of Britain’s dealings with the Italian republic. Perhaps it was his fear of annoying the Genoese that led him to meet their complaints so meekly. When Castiglione, the Genoese secretary of state, sent him three notes dated between 28 May and 16 June and in sum charging Nelson’s people with seizing neutral property, attacking ships in Genoese havens, and ill-treating some of their crews, he had not mounted a fierce rebuttal. Instead, he had promised an investigation and forwarded the complaints to the British foreign secretary. Nelson was furious. He was stung by what he denounced as exaggerations and lies, and even more so that Brame should see fit to send them home without first giving him the opportunity to reply.

Nelson’s visit to Genoa was therefore unusually stormy. He berated Brame for his weak response to Castiglione’s complaints, and refused to be appeased by the consul’s excuses. Brame miserably insisted that Genoa would have sent their allegations to London anyway, and he had not consulted Nelson because he thought he had sailed for England. As he worked out his anger, Nelson framed answers to the charges, and countered with some of his own, submitting verbal and written protests that British ships were being fired upon the length and breadth of the Genoese coast.
⁶

Then, in the midst of the paper war, Nelson heard the feared news that Bonaparte had marched upon Leghorn.

Among others, Fremantle raised the alarm. Still in Leghorn when word of the impending invasion of Tuscany arrived from Florence, he immediately sent the
Blanche
to Jervis with the news, and appealed to any ship on the riviera to come to his aid. It was obvious that he would have to organise an evacuation, and Nelson sailed from Genoa with Cockburn’s
Meleager
for company on 24 June.
⁷

The calms and fickle winds typical of those seas were against the
Captain
and
Meleager
as they drove towards Leghorn, and it was the morning of 27 June that they finally made the northern road. Upon his arrival, Nelson saw crowds of ships quitting the mole, more than forty sail in all, and heard the roar of guns. Fremantle had been
magnificent. With typical efficiency he had held out till the last minute, securing a place on a ship for every Briton and most of their belongings. According to Udny the operation filled three days and nights and nothing but furniture and bad debts were left behind.

It had been touch and go. As the French penetrated the outskirts of the town Governor Spannochi made a bold stand. While the British were loading their ships at the mole, he doubled his guards to prevent interference as long as he could. But the French cavalry soon spilled into the town and seized the batteries on the mole, and wild shots began flying at the departing
Inconstant
. Ten or twelve enemy privateers swarmed after the British convoy, and one of the ships was actually being towed into captivity as Nelson arrived. The commodore instantly signalled to the
Meleager
to hold the rest of the privateers at bay, and then to support the
Inconstant
in chaperoning the convoy to Corsica, while the
Captain
remained. Before long the last white sails of the fleeing ships dipped over the blue horizon, and Bonaparte was left to vent his fury on Spannochi. Pointedly establishing his headquarters in Udny’s abandoned house, the little Corsican defamed the governor as a pro-British rogue and ‘macaroni eater’, who had allowed Fremantle to impound two French ships and attempted to stir the people to resist Bonaparte’s soldiers. He arrested Spannochi, imperiously demanded the Grand Duke of Tuscany punish him and shipped him unceremoniously to Florence under guard.
⁸

The British evacuees sailing southwestwards towards St Fiorenzo made the best of their situation, transforming the decks of the ships into occasional ballrooms, and young Betsy Wynne fell deeply in love with Fremantle. The captain was less forthcoming, though he did allow that Betsy was ‘a very good humoured sensible dolly, not particularly handsome but a little healthy thing’.
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While romance blossomed on the
Inconstant
, Nelson buckled down to blockading Leghorn. He warned unsuspecting British merchantmen that the port was no longer safe, and shut in the enemy privateers and other vessels, save only the local fishing craft which he permitted to go freely about their daily business. Some of the fishermen, such as Giovanni Nere, were sources of information and got his messages in and out of the town as they plied innocently back and forth. Ashore the few remaining threads of neutrality were stretched to their limits. Bonaparte ordered his men to avoid unnecessary confrontations with the Tuscans, and concentrated his soldiers in two forts rather than quartering them with the inhabitants. Nevertheless, he subordinated
the Tuscan troops to his control and exercised a firm grip on the town. When he ordered the people to illuminate their houses in celebration they did so, and the streets echoed to the tramping of squads of French soldiery in search of arms and spoils. Bonaparte sequestrated remaining British property, sealed up warehouses and declared that anyone hiding it or treating with the enemy warships would be shot. Still, Nelson’s messengers managed to pass warily about the town and perhaps rapped urgently upon Adelaide’s door.

With a rudimentary control established, Bonaparte rushed inland with his cavalry on 29 June, alarmed by a report that the Austrians were again massing for the relief of Mantua. Behind in Leghorn he left General Claude-Henri Belgrand, Comte de Vaubois with the 75th demi-brigade, a company of artillery and a squadron of hussars, amounting in all to more than two thousand men, with orders to prepare the means of withstanding a forty-day siege in case the British or Tuscans counterattacked. The next day, the last in June, Nelson also left, satisfied that for the moment no more could be done. His destination was St Fiorenzo, where the squalid streets between the bay and the heights now bustled with refugees from Leghorn. There were important implications to be discussed with the viceroy, Sir Gilbert Elliot.
¹⁰

The loss of Leghorn was a blow to the British. The submission of the papal territories and Tuscany to France had closed their ports to British ships and turned the Italian peninsula between Naples and Genoa into enemy territory. Leghorn in particular had provided the Royal Navy with shelter, dockyard facilities, a prize court and supplies, but these favours were now reserved for the French, and the port had become a dangerous launching pad for the invasion of Corsica. The inconveniences Elliot could handle. Mail for England would have to go through Barcelona rather than Italy. Treasury bills could be cashed in Genoa instead of Leghorn, and provisions purchased there or from Naples and the Barbary ports. But that close proximity of French power cast chilling shadows over Corsica, and if Corsica fell Britain would lose its only Mediterranean base east of Gibraltar.
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The truth was that Bonaparte was teaching Jervis, Nelson and Elliot the limits of sea power. Leghorn was only part of a process that would also cost them Genoa, Corsica and the Mediterranean itself. Like Alexander of Macedon before him, Bonaparte would conquer the sea from the land.

Nelson soon had formal orders to blockade Leghorn and help Sir Gilbert Elliot to defend Corsica. The
Meleager
and
Blanche
frigates were at his disposal, together with such smaller vessels as the
L’Eclair
sloop, the six-gun
Vanneau
brig and the
Rose
cutter of ten guns.

Sir John was as supportive as circumstances permitted. In switching Cockburn from the
Meleager
to the larger
La Minerve
, he wrote to Nelson, ‘I will not keep him four and twenty hours to make the exchange, knowing how much you rely on his arm.’ Nelson likewise found a sturdy crutch in Elliot. The sophisticated diplomat, fluent in ideas and strong in his support of the navy, was a reassuring and sympathetic ear, especially now that Drake was in Vienna. Whereas many a naval officer went to Nelson for comfort and counsel, the commodore himself turned to Sir Gilbert, ‘a treasure’ he had grown to love. Both the viceroy and his lady reciprocated. Sir Gilbert had a huge affection for Nelson, while Lady Elliot declared herself a ‘great admirer’. It was Elliot who found a solution to one of the commodore’s problems, the loss of the prize-court facility in Leghorn. He incorporated Corsican privateers in the commodore’s forces. Though Nelson had to concede them a share in any prize money, he gained access to the courts in Corsica and the speedy resolution of cases.
¹²

His resources remained barely adequate, however. He had to communicate with Genoa, where information, provisions and specie could be obtained, with Elliot in Bastia, and with Jervis and the fleet off Toulon, as well as arrange for the safe passage of merchantmen, suppliers and packets east and west. Moreover, there would be no half-measures with this blockade. In the commodore’s opinion such a blockade as ‘the one we had of Genoa’ back in 1793 would be ‘of little consequence’, and Jervis concurred. Nothing must get in or out of Leghorn without Nelson’s permission. As before, fishermen would pass to and fro, but no one else. Nelson imagined the port falling dead, its commerce stilled, and the furious Tuscans turning upon their French guests and expelling them from the town. Relying much upon his reputation, he confidently publicised the blockade throughout the region. ‘It will be credited, if my character is known,’ he said, ‘that this blockade will be attended to with a degree of vigour unexampled in the present war.’
¹³

Nelson instituted the blockade on 6 July, but almost immediately received a call for help from Elliot. On his last visit to Corsica, Nelson
had spoken to Elliot about the danger of another possession of Tuscany falling to the enemy. The island of Elba was part way between Leghorn and Corsica, and in French hands could be used to threaten Corsica or interrupt British communications with Italy. At the end of June, Trevor had suggested Nelson seize Elba as a precaution, risking whatever offence its occupation might cause Tuscany to ensure the safety of Corsica, and now Elliot agreed.
¹⁴

On 1 July, Elliot sent Major John Duncan of the Royal Artillery with letters to the governor of Elba, Baron Giorgio Knesevich, suggesting a temporary British occupation to protect the island from the French. The baron was by no means sure that a British garrison would improve his security. His political masters had been cowed by Bonaparte, and the governor of Leghorn had already been dismissed for assisting the British. Furthermore, inviting the British into Elba might simply provoke French reprisals against Tuscan possessions on the mainland. Given Bonaparte’s current weakness at sea, the French threat to Elba was not, in the baron’s view, imminent, and he wanted no bold moves. Rather he would sit tight and await instructions from his government. However, in replying to Elliot he admitted that if the French landed in Elba in overwhelming force, he expected he would have to follow the example of Leghorn and submit rather than fight them.
¹⁵

Elliot was in no mood to risk a French takeover of Elba, and after reading Knesevich’s replies and hearing from Duncan on 6 July he mobilised his troops. Five hundred and thirty men of the 18th (Royal Irish), 100th and 51st regiments, Dillon’s regiment, and the Royal Artillery were immediately embarked. Duncan, who commanded, was supplied with a summons to present to the garrison at Porto Ferraio, and told to take military control of the place, leaving the governor to command the civil administration. Nominally, the island would remain subject to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Several ships were speedily assembled for the expedition. The ubiquitous Fremantle commanded the naval force, which consisted of his own
Inconstant
, the
Flora
frigate (Captain Robert Middleton), the
Vanneau
(Lieutenant Gourly) and the
Rose
(Lieutenant William Walker), supported by a Corsican privateer and four transports. To play safe, Elliot sent for Nelson at Leghorn looking for his aid.