Nelson (111 page)

As one of the original movers of the business, Nelson responded immediately, leaving Sawyer to blockade Leghorn with the
Blanche
, the
Sardine
sloop under Edward Killwick and three gunboats. Rushing
to Elba with the
Peterel
he arrived off the capital, Porto Ferraio, late on 8 July, just as Fremantle’s flotilla was working in from the west. Nelson took overall command, and the next day increased his force with the
Southampton
under Captain James Macnamara, which was by chance already anchored off the port.
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Porto Ferraio was a formidably striking place, with enveloping green hills and a large citadel crowning the high cliffs above the town, its guns dominating both land and sea. The commodious anchorage below was enclosed on three sides by the town and a long jetty. Porto Ferraio was so powerful that Duncan later said that with five hundred men he could have defended it against ‘the whole of Buonoparte’s army’, and the Tuscans had a hundred pieces of artillery, four hundred regular soldiers and an armed militia. There was no possibility of surprising the place, and after a party of British officers had been rowed around to assess possible landing places frowns began to appear on faces. Nelson held a council of war aboard the
Captain
, and mooted the alternatives. In their dispatches the senior army and navy officers spoke of the ‘cordiality’ that existed between the services, and Duncan saluted the commodore’s ‘enterprising and spirited conduct’. But according to Fremantle’s private diary old divisions reared their ugly heads. ‘The soldiers [were] very undetermined and very jealous of us,’ he wrote, and doubted whether the castle could be taken. A ‘long consultation’ ensued ‘about landing the troops’, and ‘Nelson and I offer[ed] to take the town with the ships [alone]’.
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A repetition of Bastia, with the army left looking on, was unthinkable, but Nelson managed to prevail, no doubt invoking his friendship with Duncan, an old Corsican comrade in arms. In two and a half hours the same evening the soldiers were disembarked with a field piece in a bay two miles west of Porto Ferraio. Using four more guns, landed under the cover of armed launches and small warships, they quickly occupied defensible ground, and lay under arms all night. Daylight of 10 July found Duncan moving forward with an advanced guard of the 18th Regiment, taking possession of some windmills four hundred yards from the town, and sealing it off from the landward side. Elliot’s summons was then handed in at the nearest gate. It insisted upon a British occupation of the fortifications and overall control, but promised that in all other respects matters would continue as before. The governor’s civil authority would be respected, and as soon as the danger to Corsica had been averted, the redcoats would withdraw.

Knesevich was given two hours to reply but needed persuading.
After conferring with his officers and advisers, he agreed to allow the British into the town, but not the castle, and a clash of arms looked inevitable. Nelson and Fremantle went ashore to reassure civilians that they and their property were safe, while Berry menaced the castle by placing the
Captain
’s guns within half a pistol-shot range of the grand bastion. British resolution finally did the trick. At eight o’clock in the morning Duncan’s soldiers took possession of the town gates, where they were received by the governor and his principal men, and then marched into ‘the Grand Parade’. Another couple of hours gave them control of the fortifications. Nelson’s ships anchored
in the harbour, and the commodore exchanged a salute with the citadel, firing gun for gun. A garrison of 725 men was eventually installed.

It looked as if Tuscany was being dismembered by the rival powers, with the British purloining Elba to counterbalance the French occupation of Leghorn, but Nelson declared the two actions of a very different character. The people of Elba had been spared the miseries of ‘the unfortunate Leghornese’, and under British protection would enjoy ‘an increase to their happiness’. There was no sequestration of Tuscan property. The only spoils, shared equally between the army and navy, were a French privateer, its English prize and several other vessels belonging to the enemy. Nor did the populace appear dissatisfied. The streets of Porto Ferraio remained ‘quiet’, and when Miss Betsy Wynne, still enjoying life close to the ‘excellent’ captain of the
Inconstant
, accompanied a party ashore soon after the occupation, it was received ‘with the greatest demonstration of joy’.
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Jervis was delighted, and promised to recommend Berry’s promotion, but the seizure of Elba really did no more than ameliorate Elliot’s difficulties. On the mainland to the north and east French influence spread like a black flame. The Royal Navy still held the seas, but one by one the neutral sanctuaries that had provisioned and sheltered its ships were closing, and in August the allied coalition suffered another serious blow, the worst yet. France and Spain signed a defensive and offensive treaty, making it merely a matter of time before the Spaniards declared war on Britain, their former ally. The implications were serious, for despite its decline Spain was still the third greatest naval power in the world, and the combined Franco-Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean far outnumbered the ships of Sir John Jervis.
¹⁹

To Elliot, ruling a small island in an increasingly dangerous sea, the prospects were exceedingly cloudy, but there was a little solace to be had from Nelson’s refusal to be intimidated. Indeed, the weather-worn little commodore seemed to relish grappling with the ‘Dons’. To some extent he had learned to discount numbers when it came to fighting at sea. In the Mediterranean the variable winds made it difficult for big fleets to manoeuvre as an entity, and it was likely that only a portion of any large enemy force would be effective at a given time. Besides, Nelson did not rate the French and Spanish fleets very highly. He told Jackson, Trevor’s deputy, that with twenty-five sail Jervis could beat forty French opponents, ‘by taking those advantages which their [our] superior skill and management of the ships would not fail to afford’.
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For some time Nelson had been praying the French would break out of Toulon and give Jervis an opportunity to thrash them, and his only fear was that, stuck out in the Gulf of Genoa, he would miss the battle. He begged Sir John to recall him the moment action loomed. ‘I have only to hope,’ he wrote on 3 July, ‘that when it is reduced to a certainty that Mr Martin [the French admiral] means to give you a meeting, that I may be called upon to assist that ceremony.’ Early the following month Nelson showed that he was capable of disobeying orders to get a crack at the French. A Spanish fleet of ten ships of the line was supposed to have sailed from Cadiz on 1 August and linked up with a French squadron to enter the Mediterranean. Expecting a battle at last, Jervis called in his ships of the line, including the
Captain
. However, believing that only Nelson could handle affairs in the Gulf of Genoa at such a critical time, he ordered the commodore to remain on that station, and to temporarily transfer his pendant to a frigate during the
Captain
’s absence. Nelson could no more have flown to the moon than allow his ship to leave him behind with a battle brewing. Discarding the admiral’s orders, he took the
Captain
to Toulon himself.
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That scare eased, and Nelson was soon back with his squadron, though just as willing to profit from the Franco-Spanish alliance. His powerful sense of loyalty told him that Spain was acting dishonourably in changing sides, and deserved punishment. Late in August, with Britain and Spain still officially at peace, Nelson tried to persuade his superiors to loose him upon a Spanish warship that had gone into the Tiber to collect the tribute Bonaparte had wrung from the papal states. He argued that any ship carrying French property, whether belonging
to a belligerent power or not, was liable to seizure, and though Jervis agreed Nelson never got to make the raid. A month later, only weeks before the Spanish war actually began, Nelson restrained himself again when he turned a Spanish frigate away from Leghorn. He desperately wanted to capture the ship, but had to accept that as far as either he or the Spanish captain knew their two nations were still at peace.
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Nelson remained Nelson, undaunted, undismayed, but there was no doubt that his cause was sinking. The alliance of Spain and France made a direct attack on Britain feasible, and the Royal Navy would need to regroup nearer home, withdrawing forces from the Mediterranean and elsewhere if necessary. In any case, with allies and neutrals being knocked out of the war right and left, there seemed little more than trade to fight for east of the Strait of Gibraltar. In the line of duty Nelson was a fighter first and last, even with allies crumbling around him, but the prevailing tide was surging inexorably in the opposite direction.

Nelson now focused his energies on Leghorn, but encouraged by his capture of Porto Ferraio brought a new aggression to the job. If he could expel the French, he could open the port to the British again, weaken the threat to Corsica, and possibly threaten the right flank of the French army as it confronted yet another Austrian attempt to relieve Mantua. Furthermore, the Viennese court was pressing for just such a naval diversion.
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Nelson believed a victory essential for morale. Throughout Italy resistance to the French was evaporating, and even the King of Naples, hitherto the surest of Britain’s friends, had signed an armistice. However, Bonaparte’s violation of Genoa and Tuscany had provoked outrage as well as fear, and it was conceivable that the spirit of resistance might revive. If the new Austrian commander-in-chief, Marshal Count Dagobert-Sigismond de Wurmser, could defeat Bonaparte, and Tuscany be freed . . . In Nelson’s limited view of the land struggle, all that was needed to turn the tide against these bedraggled French armies of half-fed boys was unity, resolution and courage.

Several thousand French soldiers still held Leghorn, but the few gunboats they had fitted out had not, as yet, seriously challenged Nelson’s blockade. At different times his force included the
Captain
and
Diadem
ships of the line,
La Minerve
,
Blanche
and
Lively
frigates,
the
Sardine
,
Peterel
,
L’Eclair
,
Sincere
and
Vanneau
sloops and brigs, and the
Fox
and
Rose
cutters. Two gunboats taken at Oneglia and renamed
Vixen
and
Venom
, and a number of Corsican privateers supplied by Elliot helped Nelson control the shallows while his larger ships occupied the deeper water in the northern road. Small craft were essential to the work of running down enemy ships trying to enter the port, but they were constantly having to be redeployed as packets, and a French privateer taken on 11 August was happily added to the commodore’s blockading flotilla.
²⁴

At first the blockade was unyielding, shutting all ships in or out of Leghorn, but persistent appeals and the advice of Elliot and Jervis induced the commodore to relax his grip. First the vessels of favoured nations – Swedes and Neapolitans (‘I have every inclination to befriend every Neapolitan; the good faith of the king of Naples demands and ensures it of us’) – and then Venetians, Ragusans and Danes were allowed to leave Leghorn without their cargoes. But nothing was admitted, and by the beginning of September the harbours that once thronged with shipping lay unhealthily silent and still.
²⁵

The fishermen came and went, of course. Ever since his cruises off Boston years before Nelson had regretted the way wars abused their frugal livelihoods, and on 22 August he notified the governor of Leghorn that he

had given passports to every fisherman to go out as usual with their tartans, and it is with astonishment I find that the poor fishermen, who are obliged to come on board my sovereign’s ship to obtain that permission, which not only maintains a number of poor Tuscan families but also supplies the town of Leghorn with fish, are, by your Excellency, as president of the health-office, subjected to a quarantine of ten days, although I have given my word of honour, which till now never was doubted, that I am with my squadron in
libera practica
.
²⁶

Intelligence as well as humanity was his game, for as many as twenty of these fishing boats gathered under the stern of the
Captain
each morning to secure leave to proceed, bringing with them information and messages from the town. One master (perhaps Giovanni Nere, whose services had already earned a certificate of immunity from Nelson, or maybe an informant named Pensa) became a regular ‘reporter’. Nelson paid for spies. They hurried through sunlit courtyards and the labyrinth of shadowy, narrow, interlocking streets, and communicated
in whispers to pro-British elements within the town, including old employees of the British consulate. Nelson managed a furtive correspondence with the friendly Neapolitan consul in Leghorn (‘I . . . shall endeavour to get a letter to him this evening’), and of course there was Adelaide.
²⁷

She spoke French as well as Italian, and may now have been consorting as freely with Bonaparte’s officers as once she had with their English counterparts, picking up useful tidbits in the process. Probably Adelaide was one source of Nelson’s information about what was happening in Leghorn, but scholars who have suggested that she spied for him, exchanging information for money like some eighteenth-century Mata Hari, are probably exaggerating. Nelson did pay spies, but there appears to be no evidence that his donations to Adelaide were made on that account; more likely they represented long-standing maintenance commitments to a mistress.

The impression that Adelaide was something more than an occasional and minor contributor to Nelson’s secret service gained strength from a letter the commodore wrote to Elliot on 3 August. ‘One
old
lady tells us all she hears,’ he said, with a use of italics that suggests his informant was far from undesirable. Almost every biographer since Oliver Warner has supposed that Nelson was referring to Adelaide, but this was probably not the case. Much more likely he alluded to Madame Frances Caffarena of the Strada Balbi in Genoa, the English wife of an Italian merchant. Joseph Caffarena, his wife and two sons supplied provisions to the British fleet. In dealing with Madame Caffarena, who handled much of the correspondence, Nelson found her so politically astute and observant that he asked her to act as an informer, cautioning her – as she said – ‘with agreeable pleasantry to take care what I wrote’. The day Nelson wrote his letter to Elliot, Madame Caffarena replied: ‘I shall always be happy to obey your commands, and if you can pass over the errors of a female pen, what may come to my knowledge I shall immediately communicate to you with infinite satisfaction. My only fear is getting truth out of the various cross-purposes propagated by the agents of the mushroom republick.’
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