Nelson (115 page)

Nor could Nelson’s boldness prevail against the wider and relentless political countercurrent. His every effort seemed destined to be overthrown. While he was on the turquoise seas of the Mediterranean, striving to protect Corsica and endeavouring to disable the French juggernaut, in Whitehall the politicians gave up the game.

On 25 September, Sir John Jervis received an ominous packet from the Admiralty. It contained orders to evacuate Corsica and to withdraw from the Mediterranean. The Franco-Spanish alliance had done the key damage. Confronted with what on paper at least was a formidable naval combination, as well as the possibility of the Spaniards using their port of Cadiz to drive a wedge between the British Mediterranean and Channel fleets, the government decided to concentrate its forces nearer home. It made sense, particularly as Britain now
had few allies east of Gibraltar and no efficient ones, but after three years of travail it was a bitter draught to swallow.

Jervis wrote to Nelson the same day. For a while Cockburn should continue to blockade Leghorn, but Nelson was to help Elliot evacuate the British from Corsica. Nelson was still at Bastia when he got the news on the 29th. Deep within he was not sorry to relinquish Corsica, for like Drake he had grown thoroughly disillusioned with islanders who seemed to him ungrateful and ‘rotten at heart’. But he shuddered for his remaining friends and allies in Italy, and felt personally for Elliot who was left ‘very low and distressed’ at the destruction of his work.
⁶³

These new orders put an entirely different complexion upon Nelson’s plans for Genoa. It was obvious that Capraia, which he had wanted for leverage, would now have to be surrendered anyway. With the British gone, Elba and Capraia would revert to their original owners. Nelson acted with his usual decision. He embarked upon a final, almost forlorn, effort to bluff Genoa into a compromise before news of the British retreat could spread.

Elliot’s terms for the restitution of Capraia were in his pocket, but he was unable to dignify them with his new seventy-four. The
Captain
was due to receive a new foremast at Ajaccio, and Commodore Nelson had switched his broad pendant to the
Diadem
sixty-four on 26 September. He had made satisfactory progress with the crew of the
Captain
, strengthened as it was with old
Agamemnons
. The punishment rate had been moderate: thirty-four floggings, of which eight consisted of more than twelve strokes of the cat. Aboard the
Diadem
he worked with new material, though he took with him a personal servant, James Lenstock, the invaluable Charles Peirson, Lieutenant Noble as a signalling lieutenant, and Midshipman Withers. The
Diadem
also had the distinction of providing Nelson with his first flag captain. He had been entitled to one since becoming an official commodore, and Berry had acted in that capacity on the
Captain
. As commander of the
Diadem
, George Henry Towry served Nelson as flag captain during the mission to Genoa.
⁶⁴

Nelson sailed from Bastia on 5 October and made Genoa in three days. There were few chances of success, and even the patient Drake had warned his foreign secretary that French influence had destroyed the prospects of reconciliation. Against Gallic bayonets, Nelson had little to offer. He was authorised to restore Capraia and any detained ships, but only if the republic fulfilled impracticable conditions. British
property must be released, Genoa’s ports opened to His Majesty’s subjects and reparations made for the insult to the British colours. Capraia must remain under British control for as long as any part of Italy remained occupied by the French, and accept a permanent vice consul or agent to protect British interests. They were not terms that could have extricated Genoa from her difficulties, and Admiral Jervis had grown increasingly bellicose and indisposed to compromise. On 7 October, while Nelson struggled to achieve the impossible in Genoa, the admiral was urging Brame to tell the republic that he would ‘batter down the mole-head and deface the beautiful city’ with his fleet if Britain’s terms were refused.
⁶⁵

With a distinct sense of
déjà vu
Peirson was rowed into Genoa on 8 October under a flag of truce, bearing news that Nelson was empowered to negotiate and needed permission to land. After an hour in which the lieutenant was kept waiting in his boat an answer arrived in the negative. The Genoese secretary of state said the matter would be pursued in London rather than the Mediterranean. The following day Nelson tried again, but his messenger, Captain Towry, was turned away and had to leave a packet containing the British terms with Brame. On 10 October the
Diadem
sailed away.
⁶⁶

It had been a futile exercise from the beginning. Genoa had already drafted an official complaint for their minister, the Marquis of Spinola, to present to the king in London, and published their anti-British interpretation of the dispute in Genoa. The republic was sinking deeper and deeper into French pockets, and even as Nelson waited impatiently off the harbour, her leaders were concluding a humiliating pact with France, granting Bonaparte’s army the right to pass through Genoese territory, submitting to a financial levy, and undertaking to keep their ports closed to the British. On the 15th Castiglione dismissed the Elliot–Jervis terms in writing, and a day or two later the wisdom of Genoa’s decision was confirmed when news reached the city that Britain was evacuating the Mediterranean. The Genoese had taken their only viable course.
⁶⁷

Nelson was incensed beyond words when he learned how his conduct was being represented by the Genoese in London, especially a barb that, as he had seized the French ship after giving his word of honour not to fire in anger within gunshot of Genoa, he had been shown to be faithless. But all his colleagues held him blameless, including Drake and Trevor, who preferred to handle the dispute with tact rather than indignation. Jervis almost boiled over, demanding that
Brame use every organ of publicity to refute the Genoese allegations. In London the commodore also received the unanimous backing of superiors, and Spinola was curtly informed that the king ‘entirely’ approved of Nelson’s conduct ‘in all his transactions with the republic of Genoa’. The British government stoutly refused to discuss the affair while British property remained sequestrated, and retaliated with an embargo of their own, seizing all Genoese ships and goods in Britain. The break with the once neutral republic was complete, and southern Europe from Gibraltar to Naples had become a coast of unrelieved hostility.
⁶⁸

Jervis was stationed with the fleet in Mortella Bay at St Fiorenzo with the awesome job of evacuating Corsica and protecting its retreating soldiers and civilians from French and Spanish interference. The flash-point, if there was going to be one, was Bastia, the largest of the Corsican strongholds. Jervis ordered the acting commander of the
Captain
, Charles Stuart, to take Sutton’s
Egmont
and a few frigates and sloops under his command and begin loading the powder at Bastia. The rumours of unrest were disturbing, and Jervis breathed a sigh of relief when he learned that Commodore Nelson himself had returned from Genoa, and was at Bastia with the
Diadem
. No officer in the navy was as famous in Corsica or more respected. If anyone could evacuate the place without loss it was Nelson.
⁶⁹

Bastia was certainly simmering when Nelson arrived before daylight on Friday 14 October. The
Egmont
followed him in before noon, but as yet there was no sign of the
Captain
. A boat dropped the commodore at a wharf in front of Elliot’s house, in the north of the town, and he was soon listening to a disturbing tale. News of the British retreat had been spreading like wildfire throughout Corsica, and control was passing to municipal committees. Some of the committees were dominated by Francophiles, but even moderate Corsicans understood the importance of squaring themselves with the incoming regime. Britain’s writ melted like frost in sunlight. The road between Bastia and St Fiorenzo was no longer safe, and in Bastia a Committee of Thirty prepared to send deputies to the generals in Leghorn, seeking re-admission to the French republic. Elliot understood their difficulty, and still felt obligations towards them. He agreed to parole any French prisoners being held in Bastia to help the deputies buy influence with
their new masters, and generously promised to leave the forts and Corsican artillery in a serviceable condition – provided, of course, that the British were allowed to withdraw without trouble.
⁷⁰

Elliot was an idealist who romanticised the Corsicans and he had not reconciled himself to evacuating the Mediterranean. Reporting these events, he would minimise the extent of Corsican disaffection, and claim that stories of threats to the departing British had been ‘false and exaggerated’. Despite ‘short interludes of uneasiness’ he had never heard a ‘murmur of resentment’ against the British, and the actions of the Committee of Thirty had been ‘prudent and honourable’ throughout. At the time, though, he seemed less certain. Lady Elliot, whose elegant balls had enlivened the social life of Bastia in their day, had left with her children for Gibraltar, and the viceroy had asked Jervis to cover the evacuation of Bastia with a warship. According to Nelson, Sir Gilbert was in a state of some alarm when he saw him that morning of the 14th. Elliot had a house guard, but it was rumoured that an attempt would be made on his life, and he immediately asked the commodore to store important papers aboard the
Diadem
.
⁷¹

Hurrying on to the quarters of Lieutenant General De Burgh, who commanded the British garrison in the citadel, Nelson sensed the growing unease. It is doubtful if the army was as ‘panic-struck’ and ‘helpless’ as the commodore claimed, but the Corsicans had successfully insisted on sharing guard duties, and De Burgh admitted that as many of them as Britons now manned the citadel, batteries, gates and storehouses. Before long – perhaps that day – he expected to lose control of the citadel, and the prospect of saving guns or provisions seemed negligible. Nevertheless, De Burgh had already made up his mind to take a strong line. He intended to inform the committee that he would use all provisions rightly belonging to his troops, and that any attempt to obstruct his duties would meet with a severe response. Nelson suggested the gates of the citadel be closed against further infiltration, talked up their chances, and told the general to prepare for a secret evacuation.
⁷²

Back at Elliot’s residence the commodore was mobbed by terrified British merchants and privateer owners, some in tears. Their goods, down to their very wardrobes, had been seized and their ships shut in by a Corsican privateer moored across the mole head. They would be ruined. Nelson called for calm, and promised action, but after dark he played safe by embarking Elliot and his secretary of state, an Anglo-Corsican named Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo.
⁷³

The chances of the situation drifting out of control had to be closed down, and the next day Nelson ended any speculation about his intentions.

Under a cloudy sky the town saw the imposing, gun-spotted sides of the
Egmont
and
Diadem
ships of the line anchored at the mole head on springs, ready to swing their broadsides in murderous arcs of fire. Boats bristling with men, muskets, pistols and cutlasses headed into the harbour under Captain Towry, ready to tow the imprisoned British merchantmen to safety. The Corsican privateer charged with closing the harbour buzzed with excitement and scores of its armed compatriots clustered on the mole with primed muskets. But Nelson sent Captain Sutton of the
Egmont
ashore with a message to the Committee of Thirty. If the Corsicans interfered with the British operation Nelson would batter the town down about their ears. Sutton pulled out a watch. He gave the Corsicans fifteen minutes to answer before he began firing. Everyone in Corsica knew Nelson was not a man to be trifled with. The privateer held back, and the musketeers at the mole head scattered, some dumping their weapons in flight. Towry proceeded calmly about his business and sixty sail were brought out of Bastia.

That afternoon there was another show of strength. A privateer master or owner asked Nelson to help recover forty hogsheads of tobacco from a locked customs house. Nelson told him to demand access and sent an officer and men as an escort. A few minutes later the grateful owner was back with the keys to the customs house. The Corsican authorities, he said, went ‘as white as sheets, and said not a word’. Nelson probably exaggerated his success, but boasted that ‘Bastia . . . never was so quiet; not an armed man was found in the streets to the night of our embarkation’.
⁷⁴

Though Nelson regarded the army as too ‘well-dressed and powdered’, De Burgh had earned more respect from Elliot than had his predecessors, Stuart and Moore. He posted a hundred guards to keep the waterfront clear while the seamen loaded the ships and Nelson’s own soldiers held Elliot’s wharf. As some vessels put out with the first loads, others arrived, transports and men-of-war both. On the 15th it was the repaired
Captain
, to which Nelson and his signalling lieutenant returned with the commodore’s broad pendant. Stuart remained aboard as flag captain. The
Southampton
came in the next day, discharged the transports she had convoyed from Mortella Bay, and then left to collect the British garrison on Capraia. Her place at
Bastia was eventually taken by the
Sardine
twenty-four, the
Resolution
cutter and the
Excellent
ship of the line, the last under the command of the hugely reassuring Captain Collingwood.
⁷⁵

Night and day the work went on. Men manhandled provisions, equipment, baggage and horses to the boats, rowed them to the ships and hoisted them aboard. The possessions of civilians, diplomats, soldiers and six hundred royalist Corsican and French had to be found a place. According to one ‘old
Agamemnon
’: