The Mediterranean in 1797 and 1798.

Bonaparte's Egyptian Expedition.—The Return of the British to the Mediterranean and the Battle of the Nile.—Great Britain Resumes Control of the Mediterranean, and the Second Coalition is formed.

THE Preliminaries of Leoben silenced the strife of arms and permitted all eyes to turn to the field of diplomacy, upon which, for the twelve months following, the interest of Europe was chiefly fixed. Moreau and Hoche, commanding the two armies of France upon the Rhine, had crossed the river, to enter upon a campaign in Germany, at the very moment when Bonaparte was signing the articles. On the 22d of April, a courier, bearing news of the suspension of hostilities, arrived at the headquarters of each general, and put an immediate stop to their advance. War continued only upon the sea, between Great Britain and the nations allied with France against her.

The confidence of the Directory had grown with each successive victory of Bonaparte, and had induced a tone in their transactions with foreign governments which the latter looked upon as arrogant, if not presumptuous. Yielding to politic considerations of effect upon popular opinion, Pitt had sent to France, in October, 1796, a practised diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury, to treat for peace. The terms proposed by Great Britain were substantially a restitution of conquests on both sides. If France would give back to the emperor the Netherlands and Lombardy, Great Britain, who had lost nothing of her own, would return to France her possessions in the East and West Indies, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the status ante bellum of the fisheries. As regards the colonies taken from Holland, the disposition would be to restore them, if the government of the stadtholder were replaced; but if the republic set up by the assistance of French arms were maintained, Great Britain and the emperor, from whom the former refused to dissociate herself, would insist upon indemnification elsewhere for the injury thus done to their political position in Europe. With these understandings as a basis, the British government would be willing to enter upon negotiations for a general peace; to which it expressly required that Russia and Portugal, as well as the emperor, should be admitted. The French government replied that Great Britain had no authority to speak here for her allies; and further, that to cede territory which had been incorporated by the edicts of the Convention, as the Netherlands had, was inconsistent with the organic law of the republic. This latter plea was treated by the British government as trifling; no negotiation to close a war could go on, if results, favorable to one party, were secluded from discussion by the Ægis of its constitution. As the case stood, France and Great Britain were both conquerors; the chief allies of each were losers. Great Britain proposed that each should surrender its winnings for the benefit of its allies. France refused, because its conquests were now part of the national territory, and as such inalienable. Taking exception, moreover, to delays caused by Malmesbury's frequent references to his government for instructions, the Directory, on the 20th of December, ordered him to leave Paris, within the not very civil space of forty-eight hours.

Similar cavalier treatment was at the same time experienced by the United States. Our government, after the maritime war began, had frequent disputes with both belligerents,—concerning the treatment of American ships by the British and French cruisers,—the protection of enemies' goods by the neutral flag,—the stipulations of Jay's treaty of commerce and navigation, in 1794, regarded by France as unduly favorable to Great Britain,—and the attitude of the United States towards French privateers, which were at first allowed and afterwards forbidden to sell prizes in her ports. These difficulties were fundamentally due to the fact that, the United States having practically no navy, neither belligerent felt under any bonds to respect her rights. To Great Britain, however, friendly relations were important on account of trade interests; while France, having no merchant ships, found an advantage in using Americans as carriers, and their ports as bases from which her cruisers could harass British commerce. The former of these benefits Great Britain curtailed by the claim that enemy's goods were, by international law, seizable under a neutral flag. The United States admitted this, and also, in the interests of her own peace and neutrality, declined longer to favor French commerce-destroying. Mutual discontent followed, and resulted in the recall of the French embassy from America, in November, 1796. At the same time President Washington, being dissatisfied with Munroe, the minister at Paris, removed him. When the latter, on the 30th of December, took his leave, the President of the Directory made a speech, highly complimentary to him personally, but offensive to the United States government; and evinced, as President Adams justly said, "a disposition to separate the people of the United States from the government, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace." The same theory of the divergent interests of rulers and people, with which the French republic started on its self-imposed mission forcibly to regenerate ancient despotisms, was thus impartially applied to the free American people under the government of their chosen and beloved fellow-citizen, Washington. The Directory refused to receive Pinckney, the new envoy from the United States. He remained in Paris, unrecognized, for a month; but the morning after hearing of the victory of Rivoli, the Directory ordered him to leave France.

By a somewhat singular coincidence, while the republic was thus embroiling itself with the two chief maritime states, a change of rulers took place in Russia; which, if not strictly a maritime power, was yet well placed, through her preponderance on the Baltic, to affect the naval interests of the world. The Empress Catherine II. died on the 17th of November, 1796, when about to conclude an agreement with the courts of London and Vienna to abandon her rather passive attitude of hostility towards France, and send an army of sixty thousand men to the support of Austria. Her successor, Paul I., allowed this treaty to drop, and resumed a bearing of cold watchfulness, until Bonaparte, by the seizure of Malta, and the Directory by a threat of war if commerce were permitted between his empire and Great Britain, drove his half-insane temper into open hostilities. But this was a year later.

These events at the end of 1796 coincided in time with the close alliance of the republic with Spain and Holland and its formal treaties of peace with the Italian states. By these and by the preliminaries of Leoben were defined the external relations of France in April, 1797. At the same moment her internal condition became alarming. The time had come to choose new members to replace one third of each body of the legislature; and the elections, still influenced by the memory of the Terror, resulted in the return of so many reactionaries as to give these a majority in both houses, especially in the lower. The latter at once showed its spirit by electing for speaker, by a large majority, General Pichegru, who was in open quarrel with the Directory; and followed up this significant act by a series of measures calculated to thwart the executive power and enfeeble its action. The opposition between the legislature and the Directory grew more and more pronounced throughout the summer months; but the reactionists failed to read aright the signs of the times. They allowed themselves, by the machinations of the royalists and through injudicious acts of their own, to seem enemies of republican government, which aroused the anxiety of Hoche, commanding the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and they directly brought into question the conduct of Bonaparte towards Venice, thus stirring up the more personal and violent enmity of the brilliant conqueror of Italy. The legislature thus found itself opposed by the two generals who stood highest in public esteem as essential to the safety of France, and who, each according to his own nature, transmitted his feelings to the troops under his command, and prepared them for a coup d'État. Inflammatory speeches and toasts prevailed throughout the armies, to which the republic was dear rather as a name than as a reality, and they were easily led to think that the two houses were contemplating a return to royalty.

The majority of the Directory, half-believing the same thing, and chafed by an opposition which seriously hampered the working of the government, were ready for violent measures. Two of its members, however, were not prepared for such action; and one of these, Carnot, the organizer of the republic's early victories, was then serving his turn as president of the Directory. Unknown to him the three plotters matured their scheme, and called upon Bonaparte to send them Augereau, the most revolutionary of the generals in Italy, to direct the troops in such forcible proceedings as might be necessary. Upon his arrival he was made commandant of the military division of Paris, despite the opposition of Carnot. The latter's presidency expired on the 24th of August, and he was succeeded by one of the conspirators. On the night of September 3d Augereau surrounded the castle and garden of the Tuileries with twelve thousand troops and forty cannon, driving out the legislators who were then there, together with their guard. The Directory ordered the arrest, by its own guard, of the two members not in the plot. Carnot escaped into Switzerland; but BarthÉlemi, their other colleague, was seized. The next day the members of the two houses who had not been imprisoned met and passed a resolution, invalidating a number of the recent elections, and exiling to Cayenne the two directors and fifty-three representatives. The legislature, thus purged, was brought into harmony with the executive. An address was next issued to the departments and to the armies, declaring that the country had been invaded and disorganized by the Counter-Revolution and that patriotism, with the social and public virtues, had taken refuge with the armies. "In this," says a republican historian, "there was unhappily some truth. The middle class had become reactionary or inert; the populace now intervened but little in political movements; active democracy scarcely showed itself out of the armies. But if armies can defend liberty, they cannot put it in practice and maintain its life when abandoned by civil society. The revolution just effected with the consent of the soldiery was leading to another revolution to be effected by and for the soldiers." [153] The 18th of Fructidor, 1797, was the logical forerunner of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, when Bonaparte seized the reins of government.

The strife between the Directory and the legislature kept all Europe in suspense; for its result would profoundly affect the course of existing discussions. The emperor, repenting of his precipitation at Leoben, kept holding off from a final treaty, seeking to introduce Great Britain as a party to the deliberations. This Bonaparte indignantly refused; for it would defeat his principal aim of separate negotiations. Pitt, more desirous than before of peace, again sent Malmesbury. The Directory kept him dancing attendance at Lille, the appointed place of meeting, during its struggle with the Councils. It made several demands most unlikely to be conceded, and upon these prolonged a discussion, to which the ministry, who now really wished a favorable termination, patiently submitted. A week after the coup d'État the French negotiators were recalled, and in their place were sent others, who immediately upon arrival demanded of the British ambassador whether he had "powers to restore to France and its allies all the possessions which since the beginning of the war have passed into the hands of the English." An answer was required in the course of the same day. Malmesbury coolly replied that he neither could, nor ought to, treat on any other principle than that of compensations. The French envoys then sent him orders from the Directory to return within twenty-four hours to his Court and get powers to make those restorations. This, of course, put an end to the conference, and the war went on for four years more.

During these eventful months Bonaparte, already the most influential man in the nation through his hold upon men's imaginations, was ripening projects deeply affecting the control of the sea and the future direction to be given the gigantic efforts of which France had shown herself capable. On the 5th of April, under his management, there had been concluded with the king of Sardinia, subject to ratification by the Directory, a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, to which was prefixed a secret article ceding to France the island of Sardinia upon condition of compensation on the continent. [154] Soon after, however, events occurred which opened to his penetrating genius a more satisfactory combination. During his invasion of Carinthia the people in his rear, throughout the possessions of Venice on the Italian mainland, rose against the French, massacring several hundred soldiers who fell into their hands. This gave him a pretext for disposing of these territories, as already stated, [155] in the secret articles of Leoben, and at the same time drew from him the sinister prediction that the government of Venice, shut up to its small island, would not be of long duration. [156] On the 2d of May, having returned to Italy, he issued a proclamation, [157] setting forth his many causes of complaint for the commotions excited in his rear, endangering the army "then plunged in the gorges of Styria." He ordered the French minister to leave Venice, all Venetian agents to quit Lombardy and the Venetian possessions, and the French general to treat the troops of the republic as enemies, and to tear down her standard throughout the mainland.

This declaration of war was followed, on the 16th of May, by the abdication of the ancient oligarchy in favor of a provisional government, which requested the presence of a French division in the city to maintain order during the transition period. This Bonaparte granted, sending five thousand men, and observing cynically in his despatch to the Directory that it would thus be possible to avoid the odium attendant upon the execution of the secret preliminaries with Austria, and at the same time to quiet the clamors of Europe; since "it is apparent that the occupation is only temporary and at the demand of the Venetians themselves." [158] Ten days later he despatched General Gentili, recalled from Corsica, to Corfu with some two thousand troops, directing him to secure his hold both upon the islands and the Venetian squadron lying there, but always to act as though supporting the Venetian commissioners who were to accompany him. "If the islanders incline to independence," wrote he, "flatter them, and talk about Greece, Athens, and Sparta." [159] To the Venetian government he wrote that the expedition was sent to second its commissioners; and on the same day to the Directory, that Corfu ought to be irrevocably possessed by the French. "The island of Malta," he added, "is of the utmost importance to us.... Why should not our fleet seize it before entering the Atlantic? That little island is priceless to us. Secret articles with the king of Sardinia stipulate for us the occupation of the little islands of San Pietro. Now is the moment to fortify them;" [160] for the British Mediterranean fleet was before Cadiz, and the Channel fleet in full mutiny.

Four months later Bonaparte again wrote, "With San Pietro, Corfu, and Malta, we shall be masters of the whole Mediterranean." [161] "The islands of Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia are of more consequence to us than all Italy. If we had to choose, better restore Italy to the emperor and keep the four islands.... The empire of the Turks crumbles daily. The possession of the four islands will enable us to sustain it, or to take our share. The time is not far distant when we shall feel that, truly to destroy England, we must take possession of Egypt. The vast Ottoman Empire, which is perishing daily, puts on us the obligation to take means for the preservation of our Levant trade." [162] "If at the peace we have to consent to the cession of the Cape of Good Hope to England, we should seize Egypt. That country has never belonged to a European nation. It does not now belong to the Grand Turk. We could leave here with twenty-five thousand men, convoyed by eight or ten ships-of-the-line, and take possession of it. I wish you would inquire, Citizen Minister, what effect upon the Porte would result from our expedition to Egypt." [163] "Our occupation of Corfu and the other islands entails relations with the pashas of Albania. These are well affected to the French. In vain should we seek to sustain the Turkish Empire; we shall see its fall in our day. Corfu and Zante give us mastery of the Adriatic and the Levant." [164] In these quotations, which could be multiplied, is seen the genesis of the great Egyptian expedition, to which, until it was carried into effect, Bonaparte recurred again and again with the persistency characteristic of his conceptions.

While he was thus employed, on the one hand flattering Venice with the hope of continued national existence, and on the other treating with Austria for her extinction and a division of the spoil, in which France was to have the Ionian Islands and the Venetian navy, [165]—while Malmesbury was negotiating at Lille, and the Directory was in bitter conflict with the Councils,—there was painfully sailing for England, crippled and suffering, the man who was destined to dispel the gorgeous dreams of Eastern achievement which filled Bonaparte's brain, and to shatter the French navy,—the all-essential link which alone could knit together these diverse maritime possessions, the one foundation upon which stood the whole projected fabric of Mediterranean control. During the wearing times of the Cadiz blockade, Lord St. Vincent, aware how much the listlessness of such inactive service contributed to foment mutiny, endeavored ingeniously to contrive fighting to occupy the minds of the seamen. For that purpose, largely, he bombarded Cadiz; and for that purpose he sent Nelson, with a detached squadron, to seize the town of Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands by a sudden and vigorous assault, hoping also there to take the rich cargo of a galleon, laden on account of the Court of Spain. The attack was made on the night of July 24, with all the vigor to be expected of Nelson, but under great disadvantage. It resulted in a disastrous repulse with heavy loss; and the admiral himself suffered amputation of the right arm. It became necessary for him to go to England, where he remained through a long and painful convalescence until the following April; when he again sailed to join the Mediterranean fleet, arriving just in time to command the squadron sent in pursuit of Bonaparte.

The dissensions which weakened the external action of the French government having been silenced by the coup d'État of September 4, Bonaparte rapidly drew to an end the negotiations with Austria. On the 17th of October, 1797, he, as sole representative of France, signed the treaty of Campo Formio; which followed the general lines of the Leoben preliminaries, yet with important differences. The dissimulation concerning Venice was thrown aside, and the ancient state wholly disappeared. The city, with the mainland as far as the Adige, were given to Austria. West of the Adige, the old Venetian provinces went to the Cisalpine Republic, which was also dowered with the papal legations attributed for a brief moment to Venice. The countries and islands east of the Adriatic which had belonged to her were divided at the Gulf of Drino. All inside that point went to Austria; all outside, to France, which thus became possessed of the desire of Bonaparte's heart, Corfu and its sister islands, with some slight territory on the adjacent mainland. The cession of the Netherlands to France was confirmed, and provision was made for a Congress to be held at Rastadt for the pacification and rearrangement of the German Empire; for Bonaparte had persisted in treating with the emperor on account only of his own dominions, and apart from the rest of the empire. By secret stipulations, the two great powers agreed to support each other's demands and interests in the Congress; where France wished to secure a certain line of the Rhine, and Austria to indemnify herself, at the expense of some German minor states, for the losses undergone by the treaty.

The salient features of this treaty were therefore the cession of Belgium; the annihilation of Venice; the settlement of the Cisalpine Republic as a powerful dependency of France; the strengthening of the latter as a Mediterranean state by the gain of the Ionian Islands; and, finally, the loosing of her hands against Great Britain, which now stood without a strong ally in all Europe. Bonaparte justified his action to his critics on these grounds, but especially on account of the necessity of dealing with Great Britain single-handed. "When the Cisalpine has the best military frontier in Europe, when France gains Mayence and the Rhine, when she has in the Levant Corfu, extremely well fortified, and the islands, what more would you wish? To scatter our force, in order that England may continue to take from us, from Spain, from Holland, our colonies, and postpone yet further the restoration of our trade and our navy?... Either our government must destroy the English monarchy, or must expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption and intrigue of those active islanders. The present moment offers us a fine game. Let us concentrate all our activity upon the navy, and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet." [166] Thus did Bonaparte demonstrate that the scene of strife was to be transferred to the sea.

The Directory at once ratified the Treaty of Campo Formio, and named Bonaparte one of three plenipotentiaries to the Congress of Rastadt. The general remained in Italy for a month longer, organizing the new state, and distributing the army with a view to support the interests of France, while withdrawing some thirty thousand men for the intended army of England. On the 17th of November he left Milan, and on the 25th arrived at Rastadt. He remained there, however, but a week; and then, apparently at the call of the Directory, [167] started for Paris, which he reached on the 5th of December. He was avowedly to command the army of England, and during the two following months his correspondence betrays no sign of any other purpose; his orders to various subordinates, and especially to Berthier, his celebrated chief-of-staff, at the time commanding in Italy, abound with dispositions and instructions to transfer troops thence towards the Channel. Particularly significant of such intention were the orders sent from him to Admiral Brueys, commanding the French division in Corfu, to start for Brest, [168] —a mission which would make his force inaccessible for the Egyptian expedition. Too much stress, however, cannot be laid upon such indications coming from so crafty a nature; and the first intimation of a change of purpose has more the appearance of stripping off a mask than of awakening from a dream. "Make what efforts we will," wrote he to the Directory, on February 23, 1798, "we shall not for many years acquire the control of the seas. To make a descent upon England, without being master of the sea, is the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted." [169] Most true, but not new. Nor was the veil under which he covered his change of attitude very difficult to pierce. On the 7th of February, 1798, he wrote to the Minister of War that he was about to visit the Channel coast, near Dunkirk, sending Kleber and Desaix to Havre and Brest. On the 12th from Dunkirk he sends engineers to examine Boulogne, Etaples, Ambleteuse, and Calais,—ports on which he, five years later, based his more serious projects of invasion; and at the same time two others are dispatched to Holland to demand help of various kinds. The very next day, February 13, he sends orders to Toulon, in the name of the Directory, not only to hold on to the ships ordered for Brest, but to send despatch vessels in every direction to recall to Toulon all ships-of-war cruising in the Mediterranean. [170] Returning to Paris, he addressed a letter to the government, setting forth what needed to be done by the month of April in order to make the attempt upon Great Britain even possible,—a long array of requirements, which only he, if his heart were in the matter, was capable of accomplishing. He concluded by saying there were but three ways of reaching England. One was by direct invasion; the second, by an attempt upon Hanover and Hamburg,—the continental centres of her trade; the last, by an expedition to the Levant.

On the 5th of March Bonaparte communicated to the government a note containing the dispositions necessary for an expedition to seize Egypt and Malta. The same day the Directory issued a number of decrees, constituting a commission on the Coast Defences of the Mediterranean, under cover of which the needed preparations were to be carried on, and defining the various steps to be taken. The ships at Toulon were required to be ready for sea on the 4th of April. Admiral Brueys, who had been unable to sail for Brest on account of want of provisions, was on February 12 ordered to Toulon. He arrived there with, his squadron on the 2d of April, and was appointed to command the naval part of the expedition, to consist of thirteen ships-of-the-line with smaller vessels. All arrangements were pushed with the greatest activity possible, though much retarded by the extreme want of naval stores, of provisions, and of money. Still greater difficulty was experienced from scarcity of sailors; the inducements offered by privateers having drawn away almost all the seamen of the republic, and landed great numbers of them in British prisons,—a sad result of the much-vaunted commerce-destroying. Through all, the pretence of invading England was maintained; and Bonaparte himself, to mislead opinion, stayed till the last moment in Paris. The Spanish fleet at Cadiz was, by the urgent demands of the Directory, made to assume positions which threatened an approaching departure, in order to fasten St. Vincent's ships to the port and foster in British minds the easily aroused fear of an invasion of Ireland. But measures so extensive could not long escape comment and suspicion. The actual intentions of the Directory were kept so impenetrably secret that, after the expedition sailed, the senior naval officer at Toulon wrote to the Minister of Marine, "I know no more of the movements of the squadron than if it did not belong to the republic;" [171] but it was not possible to conceal the patent fact that Marseille, Toulon, Genoa, Civita Vecchia, and Corsica were alive with hurried preparations for a great naval undertaking, whatever its destination might be. It was evident, therefore, that France was about to expose herself for a time upon the sea to the blows of Great Britain, and the ministry determined not to let such an opportunity slip.

During the year 1797 no British fleet, and, with the rare exception of one or two scattered cruisers, no British ship-of-war, had entered the Mediterranean. The gathering of the Spanish navy at Cadiz, and of the greater part of the French in Brest, with the apparent design to invade Ireland or England, had dictated the concentration of the British navy before those two ports; either immediately, as St. Vincent at Cadiz, or by the dispositions—less fitted to compass their purpose—of the Channel fleet, by which bodies of ships were gathered at points other than Brest, with the hope of combining them against any sortie from that port. Great Britain, during the time following St. Vincent's retreat from the Mediterranean, was in the position of a nation struggling for existence,—for so she felt it, [172] —which had been compelled to contract her lines through loss of force, due to the gradual submission of her allies to her enemies. To this had further conduced the threatening attitude of the Dutch navy in the Texel, requiring a strong North Sea fleet. To her other embarrassments had been added, in this year of distress, the extensive mutinies in the navy. Though appeased in some instances and quelled in others, the spirit which caused them still existed. Under these circumstances Bonaparte, in 1797, had met no naval obstacle to his plans for the control of the Mediterranean, which had, moreover, been so covert as to escape detection. Admiral Brueys had gone from Toulon to the Adriatic, remained there several months, and returned in peace; and all minor naval movements went on undisturbed. The destiny of Corfu was not revealed till the end of the year; the purpose to get hold of Malta, seriously entertained by Brueys at the instigation of Bonaparte, [173] never transpired; and the talk about the army of England combined with the actual positions of the allied fleets to retain the British in the same stations. Toward the end of 1797 several circumstances occurred to relieve the pressure. In October Admiral Duncan inflicted upon the Dutch fleet, off the Texel, a defeat so decisive and complete as to throw it out of the contest for a long time. Of fifteen ships opposed to him, nine were taken. The condition of the French fleet in Brest, if not accurately known to be as bad as Bonaparte represented it, [174] was still sufficiently understood. No attempt had been made during the summer or winter of 1797 to renew the Irish expedition; and when the opening spring of 1798 permitted the Channel fleet in a body to keep the sea, the ministry felt it safe to detach a force to the Mediterranean.

Sir Horatio Nelson sailed from England on the 10th of April, and joined the fleet off Cadiz on the 30th. Lord St. Vincent welcomed him gladly, and at once sent him with three ships-of-the-line to the Mediterranean, to watch the impending armament, and, if possible, learn its destination. Nelson left the fleet on the 2d of May, the day before Bonaparte quitted Paris. On the 17th, having been unavoidably delayed at Gibraltar, he was in the neighborhood of Toulon, and captured a French corvette just leaving port; from which he learned particulars as to the naval force of the enemy, but nothing as regarded its destination. On the night of the 20th, in a violent gale of wind, his own ship was dismasted and with difficulty saved from going ashore. By great exertions she was towed by her consorts into the San Pietro Islands, at the south end of Sardinia, where she anchored on the 23d. On the 19th Bonaparte had sailed with the Marseille and Toulon divisions of the expedition. He was to be joined on the way by the detachments from Genoa, Corsica, and Civita Vecchia,—the total number of troops amounting to between thirty and thirty-five thousand.

On the same day that Nelson parted from St. Vincent, May 2, the admiralty wrote to the latter that it was essential to send twelve ships-of-the-line into the Mediterranean to counteract the French armament; and that to replace them eight ships had been ordered from England. A private letter from the First Lord, by the same mail, authorized St. Vincent to take his whole force for this object, if necessary, but hoped a detachment would be sufficient. In the latter case, while the choice of its commander was left to the admiral, it was intimated that Nelson, though junior to two other flag-officers, was by all means the proper man. Jervis had already made the same decision; and now at once told off and prepared the nine ships-of-the-line, forming the inshore squadron of the blockade, to start the moment the expected re-enforcement arrived. The junction of the latter with the main fleet was made May 24, out of sight of the port; and during the night Captain Troubridge sailed with the inshore ships, their places being taken by vessels similarly painted, so that no suspicion of the transaction might arise in Cadiz. On the 7th of June Troubridge joined Nelson, having picked up two more ships by the way; so that the British were now thirteen seventy-fours and one of fifty guns. By a very strange fatality, however, the frigates at first with Nelson had parted company the night his ship was dismasted, and had never rejoined. Troubridge brought only one little brig; and, as it was inadmissible to scatter the ships-of-the-line, the want of lookout vessels seriously affected all Nelson's movements in the long and harassing pursuit, covering nearly eight weeks, that lay before him.

After leaving Toulon, Bonaparte directed his force along the Gulf of Genoa, where, on the night of May 20, he experienced the same gale that dismasted Nelson. The next day the convoy from Genoa joined. Steering south along the east coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, the division from Corsica met him on the 26th off the south end of the island, but that from Civita Vecchia failed to appear. Here the French first heard that Nelson was in the Mediterranean with three ships, and expected ten more. Bonaparte then continued on for Malta, which he reached on the 9th of June, and found there the division from Civita Vecchia, thus bringing his whole force under his hand. The island was immediately summoned, and after a faint show of resistance capitulated on the 12th; the French fleet and convoy, numbering four hundred sail, entering the port of La Valetta on the 13th. Bonaparte remained the time necessary to secure his conquest temporarily; then leaving a garrison of four thousand men, and notifying the Directory that at least four thousand more with ample supplies were needed, he sailed again on June 19 for Egypt.

The British fleet, after its junction, was becalmed for several days. It then made the best of its way round the north end of Corsica, and thence south between Italy and the islands. Not till June 14, off Civita Vecchia, was probable information received that the French had been seen ten days before off the south-west point of Sicily, steering to the eastward. As yet there was no certainty as to their destination, and Nelson had no light vessels for scouts. St. Vincent in his instructions had said, reflecting the ideas of the government, that the enemy's "object appears to be either an attack upon Naples or Sicily, the conveyance of an army to some part of Spain to invade Portugal, or to pass through the Straits with the view of proceeding to Ireland." The whole situation vividly illustrates the difficulty of pursuit by sea, and the necessity of stationing and keeping the detaining force near the point of the enemy's departure before he can get away. By whatsoever fault, certainly not that of Nelson or St. Vincent, the British fleet was a fortnight too late in entering the Mediterranean. It would have been yet more so, had the resources of the French dockyards answered to the spur of Bonaparte's urgency; but it is ill goading a starved horse.

An easterly course, however, with a fresh north-west wind, indicated that neither Spain nor the Atlantic was the destination of the French armament; and Nelson at once decided it must be Malta, to be used as a base of operations against Sicily. "Were I," said he, "the admiral of the fleet attending an army for the invasion of Sicily, I should say to the general: 'If you can take Malta, it secures the safety of the fleet and the transports, and your own safe retreat, if necessary;' Malta is in the direct road to Sicily." [175] Pausing a moment to communicate with Naples, he there heard, on the 17th of June, that the French had landed at Malta; and pushing on, received off Messina the news of its surrender. This was on the 20th, the day after Bonaparte sailed from the island for Egypt. On the 22d, off Cape Passaro, the south-east extremity of Sicily, a vessel was spoken, from which Nelson gained the information of Bonaparte's departure, supposed to be for Sicily; but he had meantime learned from Naples that the French had no intention of molesting any part of that kingdom. Utterly in the dark, and without frigates, he concluded, after weighing all the chances, that Egypt was the enemy's destination, and with a fair wind and a press of sail shaped his course for Alexandria. On the 28th the fleet came off the port, and sent a boat ashore. No French vessels had been seen on the coast.

This remarkable miscarriage, happening to a man of so much energy and intuition, was due primarily to his want of small lookout ships; and secondly, to Bonaparte's using the simple, yet at sea sufficient, ruse [176] of taking an indirect instead of a direct course to his object. This, however, in a narrow sea, with so numerous a body of vessels, would not have served him, had the British admiral had those active purveyors of information, those eyes of the fleet, which are so essential to naval as to land warfare. [177] On leaving Malta, Bonaparte directed the expedition to steer first for Candia. After a week's quiet navigation he was off the south side of the island, and on the 27th of June was joined by a frigate from Naples, to tell him of Nelson, with fourteen sail, being off that port ten days before. At this moment the British admiral had already outstripped his chase. On the 25th the two fleets had been about sixty miles apart, the French due north of the British, steering in nearly parallel directions. [178] When Bonaparte knew that his enemy was somewhere near upon his heels, he again changed the course, ordering the fleet to make the land seventy miles west of Alexandria, and sending a frigate direct to the port to reconnoitre. On the 29th of June, the day Nelson sailed away from Alexandria, the light squadron signalled the coast, along which the fleet sailed till July 1st, when it anchored off the city. Determined to run no chance of an enemy's frustrating his objects, the commander-in-chief landed his army the same evening.

If, in this celebrated chase, Nelson made a serious mistake, it was upon his arrival at Alexandria. He had reasoned carefully, and, as the event proved, accurately, that the French were bound to Egypt; and had justly realized the threat to the British supremacy in India contained in such an attempt. Knowing the time when the French left Malta, as he did, and that they were accompanied by so great a train of transports, it seems a fair criticism that he should have trusted his judgment a little further, and waited off the suspected port of destination to see whether so cumbrous a body had not been outsailed by his compact, homogeneous force. He appears, on finding his expectations deceived, to have fallen into a frame of mind familiar to most, in which a false step, however imposed by the conditions under which it was taken, can be seen only in the light of the unfortunate consequences, and therein assumes the color of a fault, or at best of a blunder. "His active and anxious mind," wrote Sir Edward Berry, who, as captain of the flag-ship, was witness of his daily feelings, "would not permit him to rest a moment in the same place; he therefore shaped his course to the northward for the coast of Caramania." [179] His one thought now was to get back to the westward, taking a more northerly course on the return, so as to increase the chance of information. The fleet accordingly stretched to the northward until the coast of Asia Minor was made, and then beat back along the south shore of Candia, not seeing a single vessel until it had passed that island. On the 19th of July it reached Syracuse, whence Nelson wrote to the British minister at Naples that, having gone a round of six hundred leagues with the utmost expedition, he was as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as he had been four weeks before. The squadron now filled with water, which was running short, and on the 24th again sailed for Alexandria; the admiral having satisfied himself that the French were at least neither in Corfu nor to the westward. On the 1st of August the minarets of the city were seen, and soon after the port full of shipping, with the French flag upon the walls, but, to Nelson's bitter disappointment, no large ships of war. At one in the afternoon, however, one of his fleet made signal that a number of ships-of-the-line were at anchor in Aboukir Bay, twelve or fifteen miles east of Alexandria; and Nelson, prompt to attack as Bonaparte had been to disembark, gave slippery fortune, so long unkind, no chance again to balk him, but with a brisk breeze flew at once upon the foe.

Neither by the character of the anchorage nor by its own dispositions was the French fleet prepared for the attack thus suddenly, and most unexpectedly, precipitated upon it. Two days after the army landed, the commander-in-chief gave Admiral Brueys explicit and urgent orders at once to sound the old port of Alexandria, and, if possible, take his ships in there; if not, and if Aboukir Bay would admit of defence at anchor against a superior force, he might choose a position there. Failing both, he was to go with his heavy vessels to Corfu. [180] That and the other Ionian Islands were within Bonaparte's district, by the decree of April 12 making him commander of the Army of the East. In a much later dispatch, which Brueys did not live to receive, he explains that it was indispensable to preserve the fleet from serious injury until the affair in Egypt was settled, in order to check any movement of the Porte; for, though the allegiance of the Mamelukes was but nominal, it was possible the Sultan might resent the French invasion. The justice of this cautious view was shown by the action of the Porte as soon as the destruction of the fleet became known. Brueys ordered the necessary soundings, and the report which he received on July 18, a fortnight before the battle, was favorable; with good weather it was possible to take the ships-of-the-line inside. [181] The admiral, however, was an invalid, and of a temper naturally undecided; unable to make a choice of difficulties, he hung on the balance and remained inactive, taking refuge in a persuasion that the British would not return. Bonaparte thought the same. "All the conduct of the English," wrote he on the 30th of July, "indicates that they are inferior in number, and content themselves with blockading Malta and intercepting its supplies." But the great soldier, prone as he always was to tempt fortune to the utmost for a great object, found in this opinion no reason for running unnecessary risks and in the same breath insisted upon Alexandria or Corfu for the fleet. Brueys had taken his ships to Aboukir Bay on the 8th of July, and there remained. He had the orders of his commander; but the latter, at a distance and absorbed in the cares of his operations ashore, could not communicate to his vacillating subordinate the impulse of his own energy. All the work of the squadron proceeded listlessly; the belief that the British fleet would not return sapped every effort; carelessness, indiscipline and insubordination, among officers and men, caused constant complaint and trouble. In such delusion and lethargy went by the priceless days which were passed by Nelson in unresting thought and movement, in "a fever of anxiety" [182] that scarcely allowed him to eat or drink.

The Bay of Aboukir, [183] in the western portion of which the French fleet was anchored, and where was fought the celebrated Battle of the Nile, is an open roadstead, extending from the promontory of Aboukir, fifteen miles east of Alexandria, to the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The distance between the two extreme points is about eighteen miles. In the western part, where the French were lying, the shore-line, after receding some distance from Aboukir Point, turns to the south-east and continues in that direction in a long narrow tongue of sand, behind which lies the shallow Lake Madieh. North-east from the point is a line of shoals and rocks, rising at two and a half miles' distance into a small island, then bearing the same name, Aboukir, but since known as Nelson's Island; beyond which the same stretch of foul ground continues for another mile and a quarter. Behind this four-mile barrier there is found fair shelter from the prevailing north-west summer wind; but as, for three miles from the beach, there were only four fathoms of water, the order of battle had to be established somewhat beyond that distance. The north-western ship, which with the prevailing wind would be to windward and in the van, was moored a mile and a half south-east from Aboukir Island, in five fathoms of water. [184] This was scant for a heavy vessel, but it does not seem that she was carried as close to the shoal as she might have been. As the van ship in the column, she was on one flank, and that the most exposed, of the line-of-battle, whose broadsides were turned to the sea. She should, therefore, have been brought so near the shoal as not to leave room to swing, and there been moored head and stern. So placed, the flank could not have been turned, as it actually was. This was the more necessary because the few guns established by Brueys on the island were so light as to be entirely ineffective, in range and weight, at the distance between them and the flank they pretended to strengthen. They were a mere toy defence, as futile as the other general dispositions taken. This being so, it would seem that the frigates might have been placed along the shoal ground ahead, where the enemy's ships-of-the-line could not reach them, and thence have supported the flank ship. From the latter, the line extended south-east to, and including, the eighth in the order, when it turned a little toward the beach; making with its former direction a salient angle, but one very obtuse. The distance from ship to ship was about one hundred and sixty yards; from which, and from the average length of the ships, it may be estimated that the whole line from van to rear was nearly a mile and three quarters long. In case of expecting attack, a cable was to be taken from ship to ship to prevent the enemy passing through the intervals; and springs also were then to be put upon the cable by which each vessel was anchored. [185]

It will be instructive to a professional reader to compare the dispositions of Admiral Brueys, in Aboukir Bay, with those adopted by Lord Hood in 1782, at St. Kitt's Island, when expecting an attack at anchor from a very superior force. [186] The comparison is historically interesting as well as instructive; for it has been said that Nelson framed his own plan, in the cogitations of his long chase, upon Hood's scheme for attacking the French fleet under Admiral DeGrasse while lying at the anchorage from which he first drove it, before occupying it himself. The parallel is quite complete, for neither at St. Kitt's nor Aboukir was the anchored fleet able to get substantial assistance from batteries. The decisively important points in such a disposition, as in any order of battle, land or sea, are—(1) that the line cannot be pierced, and (2) that the flanks cannot be turned. Hood thrust one flank ship so close to the shore that the enemy could not pass round her, and closed up his intervals. [187] Brueys left the same flank—for in both cases it was the van and weather ship—open to turning, with long spaces between the vessels. In his arrangement for the other flank, for the lee ships, Brueys was equally inferior. Hood threw his eight lee ships at right angles to the rest of the fleet, so that their broadsides completely protected the latter from enfilading fire. Brueys simply bent his line a little, with a view of approaching the rear to shoal water. Failing thus to obtain a fire at right angles to the principal line of battle, the rear did not contribute to strengthen that; while, not actually reaching to shoal water, it remained itself in the air, if attacked by the enemy in preference. This was the more singular, as Brueys had expected the rear to be the object of the British efforts. "I have asked," he wrote, "for two mortars to place upon the shoal on which I have rested the head of my line; but I have much less to fear for that part than for the rear, upon which the enemy will probably bring to bear all their effort." [188] Nelson, however, whether illumined by Hood's example, through that historical study of tactics for which he was noted, or inspired only by his own genius, had well understood beforehand that, if he found the French in such order as they were, the van and centre were at his mercy; and he had clearly imparted this view to his captains. Hence, when the enemy were seen, he needed only to signal "his intention was to attack the van and centre as they lay at anchor, according to the plan before developed," [189] and could leave the details of execution to his subordinates.

The evening before the eventful first of August, as the British fleet expected to make Alexandria the next day, the "Alexander" and "Swiftsure" were sent ahead to reconnoitre. In consequence of this detachment, made necessary by the want of frigates, these ships, when the main body at 1 P.M. [190] sighted the French fleet, were considerably to leeward, and did not get into action until two hours after their consorts. As soon as the enemy were seen, the British fleet hauled sharp up on the wind, heading about north-east, to weather Aboukir Island and shoal; the admiral at the same time making signal to prepare for action, anchoring by the stern. As they drew by the shoal, being in eleven fathoms, [191] Nelson hailed Captain Hood, of the "Zealous," and asked if he thought they were far enough to the eastward to clear it; for the only chart in the fleet was a rough sketch taken from a captured merchant vessel, and no British officer knew the ground. Hood replied that he would bear up, sounding as he went, so that the other ships keeping outside of him would be safe. Thus the fleet was piloted into action; one ship, the "Goliath," being ahead of the "Zealous," but on her outer bow, and the admiral very properly allowing others to pass him, until he was sixth in the order, so as to be reasonably certain the flag-ship would not touch the bottom. Captain Foley of the "Goliath," still keeping the lead, crossed ahead of the French column, over the ground left open by Brueys's oversight, intending to attack the van ship, the "Guerrier;" but the anchor hung for a moment, so that he brought up on the inner quarter of the second, the "ConquÉrant," while Hood, following close after, anchored on the bow of the "Guerrier." These two British ships thus came into action shortly before sundown, the French having opened fire ten minutes before. Five minutes later, just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, the foremast of the "Guerrier" went overboard. "So auspicious a commencement of the attack was greeted with three cheers by the whole British fleet." [192] The "Orion" followed with a much wider sweep, passing round her two leaders, between them and the shore, and anchored on the inner side of the fifth French ship; while the "Theseus," which came next, brought up abreast the third, having gone between the "Goliath" and "Zealous" and their antagonists. The "Audacious," the fifth of the British to come up, chose a new course. Steering between the "Guerrier " and the "ConquÉrant," she took her place on the bow of the latter, already engaged on the quarter by the "Goliath." These five all anchored on the inner (port) side of the French. Nelson's ship, the "Vanguard," coming next, anchored outside the third of the enemy's vessels, the "Spartiate," thus placed between her and the "Theseus." The "Minotaur," five minutes later, took the outer side of the fourth, heretofore without an opponent; and the "Defence" attacked, also on the outer side, the fifth ship, already engaged on her inner side by the "Orion." Five French seventy-fours were thus in hot action with eight British of the same size, half an hour after the first British gun was fired, and only five hours from the time Brueys first knew that the enemy were near.

This most gallant, but most unfortunate, man had passed suddenly from a condition of indolent security face to face with an appalling emergency. When Nelson's fleet was first reported, numbers of men were ashore, three miles or more away, getting water for the ships. They were recalled, but most of them did not return. Brueys still cherished the belief, with which indeed he could not have parted without despair, that the enemy would not brave the unknown perils of the ground with night falling; nor could he tell their purpose until they had passed Aboukir Island and opened the bay. A hurried council of senior officers renewed the decision previously reached, to fight, if fight they must, at anchor; but Brueys betrayed the vacillations of an unsteady purpose by crossing the light yards, a step which could have no other significance than that of getting under way. Still, he hoped for the respite of a night to make the preparations so long neglected. Little did he know the man whom England herself still hardly knew. Without a moment's pause, without a tremor of uncertainty, yet with all the precautions of a seaman, Nelson came straight onward, facing with mind long prepared the difficulties of navigation, the doubts and obscurity of a night action. Hurriedly the French prepare for battle; and, secure that the enemy will not dare go within the line, the batteries on that side are choked with the numerous encumbrances of ship economy, the proper disposal of which is termed "clearing for action."

For half an hour Brueys was a helpless and hopeless, though undaunted, spectator of an overwhelming attack, which he had never expected at all, delivered in a manner he had deemed impossible upon the part of his order he thought most secure. Soon he was freed from the agony of mere passive waiting by the opportunity to act. The "Bellerophon" and "Majestic," both seventy-fours, anchored outside and abreast, respectively, of the flag-ship "Orient," of one hundred and twenty guns, and of the "Tonnant," eighty, next astern. Darkness had just settled down upon the water as the arrival of these two ships completed the first scene of the tragedy; and the British vessels, which were fighting under their white ensign, [193] as more easily seen at night, now hoisted also four lanterns, horizontally arranged, whereby to recognize each other.

Meanwhile a woeful mishap had befallen Nelson's chosen brother-in-arms, Troubridge. His ship, the "Culloden," had been some distance from the main body of the fleet when the latter rounded the shoal, and, doing her own piloting, ran upon its outer extremity at a quarter before seven. There she stuck, despite all the efforts of her most able commander, until two o'clock the next morning, when the battle was over. There also, however, she served as a beacon to the two remaining ships, "Alexander" and "Swiftsure," who had to make the perilous passage in the dark. These vessels, with the "Leander," fifty, arriving after eight o'clock, at a critical moment of the battle, played the part of a reserve in a quarter where the British were meeting with disaster.

Neither the "Bellerophon" nor the "Majestic" was equally matched with the French ship opposed to it; but the "Bellerophon" especially, having to do with a vessel double her own force and having brought up fairly abreast, where she got her full fire, was soon nearly a wreck. In three quarters of an hour her main and mizzen masts were shot away, and in thirty minutes more, unable longer to endure her punishment, the cable was cut and she wore out of action. As she did so, the foremast also fell, and, with forty-nine killed and one hundred and forty-eight wounded, out of a ship's company of six hundred and fifty men, the "Bellerophon" drifted down the line, receiving the successive broadsides of the French rear. As she thus passed, without flag or light, the "Swiftsure" came up. Withholding his fire, Captain Hallowell hailed, and finding her to be a British ship, let go at once his anchor, bringing up on the starboard bow of the "Orient." Immediately afterwards the "Alexander" arrived and anchored on the port quarter of the three-decker, while the "Leander," with the discretion becoming her size, placed herself on the port bow of the "Franklin," the next ahead to the "Orient," in a position of comparative impunity, and thus raked both the French ships. The French centre was thus in its turn the victim of a concentration, similar to that with which the action began in the van, and destined to result in a frightful catastrophe.

At about nine in the evening the French flag-ship was observed to be on fire, from what cause has never been certainly known. The British guns, trained on the part in flames, helped to paralyze all efforts to extinguish them, and they gained rapidly. The brave and unfortunate Brueys was spared the sight of this last calamity. Already twice wounded, at half-past eight a cannon-ball carried away his left leg at the thigh. He refused to be taken below, and passed away calmly and nobly a few moments before the fire broke out. At ten the "Orient" blew up. Five ships ahead of her had already surrendered, and the eighty-gun ship "Franklin" also hauled down her flag before midnight.

Six of the French still had their colors flying; but either from their cables being cut by shot, or from the necessity of slipping to avoid the explosion of the "Orient," they had drifted far astern. The three in the extreme rear had been but slightly engaged; of the others, the "Tonnant" was totally dismasted, while the "Heureux" and "Mercure" had received considerable injury. [194] The following morning these vessels were attacked by some of the least injured of the British, with the result that the "Tonnant," "Mercure," "Heureux" and "TimolÉon," the last of which had been the extreme rear, or flank, ship of the original order, ran ashore. There the three first named afterwards hauled down their flags, and the fourth was burned by her officers. The two other French ships, "Guillaume Tell" and "GÉnÉreux," escaped. The former bore the flag of Rear-Admiral Villeneuve, who had commanded the rear in this battle, and was hereafter to be commander-in-chief of the allied fleet at the memorable disaster of Trafalgar. His inaction on this occasion has been sharply criticised, both in his own time and since. Upon the whole, the feeling of later French professional writers appears to be that his courage, though unquestionable, was rather of the passive than the active type; and that in Aboukir Bay there was afforded him a real opportunity and sufficient time to bring the rear ships into action, which he culpably failed to improve. [195] Bonaparte, on the contrary, wrote to Villeneuve, soon after the battle, that "if any error could be imputed to him, it was that he had not got under way as soon as the 'Orient' blew up; seeing that, three hours before, the position Brueys had taken had been forced and surrounded." [196]

Such was, in its main outlines, the celebrated Battle of the Nile, the most complete of naval victories, and among the most decisive, at least of the immediate course of events. In it the French lost eleven out of thirteen ships-of-the-line [197] and thirty-five hundred men, killed, wounded, or drowned; [198] among them being the commander-in-chief and three captains killed, a rear-admiral and six captains wounded. The British loss was two hundred and eighteen killed—-of which one captain—and six hundred and seventy-eight wounded, among whom was the admiral himself, struck in the head by a heavy splinter. The hurt, which he at first thought fatal, disabled him for the moment and seriously affected his efficiency for some days. "I think," wrote he, four weeks later, "that if it had pleased God I had not been wounded, not a boat would have escaped." [199]

The particular circumstances under which the British attack was undertaken, the admirable skill as well as conduct shown by all the captains, and the thoroughly scientific character of the tactical combination adopted, as seen in its execution, unite with the decisiveness of the issue to cast a peculiar lustre upon this victory of Nelson's. Lord Howe, inferior to none as a judge of merit, said to Captain Berry that the Battle of the Nile "stood unparalleled and singular in this instance, that every captain distinguished himself." [200] It has been disputed how far belongs to the admiral the credit of the bold manoeuvre, whereby the leading ship, passing ahead of the French line, showed to her successors the open path through which the operation of doubling on the enemy could be most effectually carried out. Into this discussion the author has no intention of entering, beyond noting an omission in the full treatment of the question made by the careful and laborious editor of Nelson's correspondence, Sir Harris Nicolas, who was not able to reach a decision. [201] In Ross's "Life of Admiral Saumarez" it is stated that, while discussing the various modes by which the enemy might be attacked, Saumarez offended Nelson by saying that he "had seen the evil consequences of doubling upon an enemy, especially in a night action;" and had differed with the admiral in the plan of attack, because "it never required two English ships to capture one French, and that the damage which they must necessarily do each other might render them both unable to fight an enemy's ship which had not been engaged." [202] Saumarez's objection, though not without some foundation, was justly over-ruled; but it could scarcely have been raised had Nelson never contemplated the precise method of doubling employed,—a British ship on each side of a single enemy,—for in no other position could the risk of mutual injury have been serious.

It is in entire keeping with Nelson's well-known character, that, after discussing all likely positions and ascertaining that his captains understood his views, he should with perfect and generous confidence have left all the details of immediate action with them. In the actual case he could not, without folly, have rigorously prescribed to Captain Foley what path to follow. Only the man on the "Goliath's" deck, watching the soundings, could rightly judge what must each instant be done; and it was no less a transcendent merit in Nelson that he could thus trust another, than that, with falling night and unknown waters, he could reach the instant decision to attack an enemy of superior force, in an order which he must have supposed to be carefully and rationally assumed. In fact, however, the operation of doubling on the enemy,—in contradistinction to doubling the head of the line,—was really begun by Nelson himself; for his ship was the first to anchor on the side opposite to that taken by her five predecessors. It was open to him to have followed them, for the same reasons that prompted Foley's action. [203] Instead of that, he deliberately anchored outside the third French ship, already engaged on the inside by the "Theseus;" thus indicating, as clearly as example can, what he would have those succeeding him to do. The first two French ships were already so engaged or crippled as to be properly passed. The fullest credit therefore can be allowed to Captain Foley for a military decision of a very high order, without stripping a leaf from Nelson's laurels. [204]

"The boldness and skill of Admiral Nelson," says Captain Chevalier, "rose to a height which it would have been difficult to surpass." [205] "The action of Nelson," said Napoleon, "was a desperate action which cannot be proposed as a model, but in which he displayed, as well as the English crews, all the skill and vigor possible." [206] This sentence is susceptible of a double construction. The condemnation, if the words be meant as such, comes ill from the man who pushed on his desperate advance to Leoben in 1797, who at Marengo stretched his line till it broke, and who in 1798 ventured the Mediterranean fleet and the Army of Italy on the Egyptian expedition, with scarce a chance in his favor, except a superstitious reliance upon a fortune which did not betray him. The arrangements of Brueys being what they were, the odds were with the British admiral.

It has been said that, with better gunnery on the part of the French, disaster must have resulted to the attacking force; and precisely the same criticism has been applied to Trafalgar. [207] Now, putting out of consideration that Great Britain had at this date been for five years at war with France, and that British seamen had thus gained an experience of French gunnery upon which Nelson could reckon, the justice of this criticism further depends upon the circumstances of the wind and the character of the approach. An attack made with a very light wind, leaving the assailant long under the enemy's fire, or with a fresh breeze on a course that lies close to the wind, thereby bringing the greatest strain upon the spars, is a very different thing from one made with a good working breeze well abaft the beam, which was the case at the Nile. One cannot dogmatize on probabilities when, from the nature of the case, there are few precedents on which to rest an opinion. In bearing down against a fleet under way, of which there are many instances, the experience in scarcely any case was that so many spars were lost as to prevent the assailant reaching the hostile line; and at the Nile, once the anchor was down, the loss of a spar or two was of little consequence. It seems altogether probable that, had the French gunnery been much better than it was, the British ships would yet have reached their station; and once there, the tactical combination adopted would still have given them the victory, though more dearly bought. If, however, Brueys's arrangements had been more skilfully made, resembling those of Hood at St. Kitt's, and if the French gunnery had been very good, it may safely be conceded that the British admiral would have needed more circumspection in making his attack. To say that under totally different circumstances different results will obtain, is a species of prophecy with which no one need quarrel. If, in the shock of war, all things on both sides are exactly equal,—if the two admirals, their captains and crews, the ships of the fleets, the tactical arrangements, are equal, each to each,—there can be no result. When inequality, whether original or induced by circumstance, enters in any one of these factors, a result will follow proportional to the disparity. When this is great, the result will be great; when small, small. At the Battle of the Nile, the difference in admirals, in captains, in crews, in gunnery, and in tactical combination, were all greatly against the French, and the result was a disaster more than usually complete.

During the month passed by Brueys in indolent security, Bonaparte had advanced steadily in his projected conquest of Egypt. On the 21st of July the battle of the Pyramids was fought, the next day Cairo submitted, and on the 25th the general-in-chief entered the city. Remaining there a few days to repose his troops and secure his position, he departed again on the 7th of August to complete the conquest of lower Egypt; leaving Desaix to take care of Cairo and prepare the corps destined for the subjugation of the upper Nile. By the 12th of August the Mamelukes, still under arms in the Delta, had been driven into the Isthmus of Suez, whence they retired to Syria; and there, on the borders of the desert, Bonaparte received from Kleber the news of the disaster in Aboukir Bay. Under this tremendous reverse he showed the self-control of which he was always capable at need. The troops gave way to despair. "Here we are," said they, "abandoned in this barbarous country, without communication with home, without hope of return." "Well," replied their general, "we have then laid on us the obligation to do great things. Seas which we do not command separate us from home; but no seas divide us from Africa and Asia. We will found here an empire."

The magical influence he exerted over the soldiers, most of whom had followed him to victory in Italy, restored their courage, and French lightheartedness again prevailed over despondency. The blow, nevertheless, had struck home, and resounded through the four quarters of the world. The Mamelukes, Ibrahim Bey in Syria, and Mourad Bey in upper Egypt, cast down by their reverses, were preparing to treat; upon the news of Nelson's victory they resumed their arms. The Porte, incensed by the invasion of Egypt, but still hesitating, notwithstanding the pressure exerted by the ministers of Great Britain and Russia, took heart as soon as it knew that the French fleet was no more. Bonaparte had rightly warned Brueys that the preservation of his ships was necessary to hold Turkey in check. The Sultan and his Pashas of Egypt and Syria rejected the French advances. On the 2d of September a memorial was sent to all the foreign ministers in Constantinople, expressing the surprise of the Porte at Bonaparte's landing, and stating that a considerable force had been despatched for Egypt to stop his progress. On the 11th of the month war was formally declared against the French Republic. [208]

Throughout the year 1798 the state of affairs on the continent of Europe had grown continually more threatening. The politico-military propagandism of the Revolution had given birth to, and was now being replaced by, an aggressive external policy, to which the victories of Bonaparte gave increased vigor and extension. It became the recognized, if not the avowed, aim of French diplomacy to surround France with small dependent republics, having institutions modelled upon the same type as her own, with all local powers merged in those of a central government. [209] The United Provinces, in becoming a republic, had retained their federal constitution; but in January, 1798, they underwent a revolution, promoted by the French Directory, which did away with the provincial independence inherited from past ages. The Cisalpine Republic and Genoa had received a similar organization at the hands of Bonaparte. In many of the cantons of Switzerland there were discontent and disturbance, due to the unequal political conditions of the inhabitants. The Directory made of this a pretext for interference, on the plea of France being interested both in the internal quiet of a neighboring country and also in the particular persons whose discontent was construed as evidence of oppression. French troops entered Switzerland in January, 1798. The canton of Berne fought for its privileges, but was easily subdued; and a packed convention, assembled at Aarau, adopted for Switzerland a centralized constitution in place of the old cantonal independence. This was followed some months later, in August, 1798, by an offensive and defensive alliance between the Helvetian and French republics.

The invasion of Berne had had another motive than the political preponderance of France in the councils of her neighbors. The revenue of the Directory still fell far short of the expenditure, and money was particularly wanted for Bonaparte's approaching expedition. Seventeen million francs were found in the Bernese treasury and appropriated. Eighteen million more were raised by requisitions, and other cantons were drained in proportion. [210] The same motive contributed, [211] at the same instant, to the occupation of Rome, for which a more plausible pretext was found. In the papal states, as elsewhere throughout Europe, French agents had secretly stirred up a revolutionary movement. On the 28th of December, 1797, this party had risen in Rome, and a collision between it and the papal troops had occurred in the neighborhood of the French embassy. General Duphot, who was then residing there, was killed while attempting to interpose between the combatants. The French ambassador at once left the city; and the Directory, refusing all explanations, ordered Berthier, Bonaparte's successor in Italy, to advance. On the 10th of February he entered Rome, recognized the Roman Republic, which was proclaimed under his auspices, and forced the Pope to retire to Tuscany. It was owing to this occupation that a contingent of the Egyptian expedition embarked at Civita Vecchia, as the most convenient point.

Neither Naples nor Austria ventured on overt action in behalf of the Pope; but the dissatisfaction of both was extreme. Never under Bonaparte himself had French troops come so near to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose importance to the common cause of the Continent, from its geographical position, was perfectly understood. But while the situation of Naples at the far end of the peninsula made it a serious danger to the flank and rear of the French, when engaged with an enemy in upper Italy, its remoteness from support, except by way of the sea, was a source of weakness to a state necessarily dependent upon allies. This was especially felt in February, 1798, when the British fleet, after a year's absence, had as yet given no sign of returning to the Mediterranean, and the ships which accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt were still in Toulon. The latter would doubtless have been directed upon Naples, had Naples moved against Rome. The Bourbon kingdom therefore swallowed its vexation, but drew closer to Austria; which, in addition to the affront offered to the Pope, had its own motives for discontent in the occupation of Switzerland by the French, and in the changes introduced into the political complexion of the Continent by these aggressive actions of the republican government. The course of the Directory during the continental peace of 1797 and 1798 was closely parallel to that of Bonaparte four years later, which made impossible the continuance of the Peace of Amiens. With less ability and less vigor, there was the same plausible, insidious, steady aggression, under color of self-protection or of yielding to popular demand, which forced on the power of France at the expense of other states. An occurrence in Vienna at this moment came near to produce war and stop the Egyptian expedition. When Bonaparte entered Germany in April, 1797, the youth of Vienna had offered themselves in mass to defend the country. In April, 1798, the anniversary of the day was celebrated with a popular demonstration, which the French ambassador resented by hoisting the tricolor. The crowds in a rage broke into and sacked the embassy. [212] So great was the excitement over this affair that the troops in Toulon and other ports were ordered not to embark, and Bonaparte himself was directed to go as plenipotentiary to Rastadt; but the emperor made explanations, and the incident passed. Still, as a French historian says, "things were getting spoiled between Austria and France." [213]

Russia at the same time was fairly forced from her attitude of reserve, maintained since the death of Catherine II., by the same policy which drove the United States into the quasi war of 1798 with France. [214] A decree of the French legislature had made lawful prize any neutral ship which had on board, not merely British property, but any goods of British origin, even though the property of a neutral. This was given a special application to the Baltic by a notification, issued January 12, 1798, that "if any ship be suffered to pass through the Sound with English commodities, of whatever nation it may be, it shall be considered as a formal declaration of war against the French nation." [215] Although immediately directed against Sweden and Denmark, as the two countries bordering the Sound, this was resented by the Czar, in common with all neutral governments; and on the 15th of May, he "ordered twenty-two ships-of-the-line and two hundred and fifty galleys to proceed to the Sound, to protect trade in general against the oppression of the Directory." [216]

Once enkindled, the violent and erratic temper of Paul I. soon rushed into extremes; and he received further provocation from the capture of Malta. When Bonaparte took possession of that island, he found there a treaty, just signed, by which the Czar stipulated a payment of four hundred thousand rubles to the Order, in which to the end of his days he preserved a fantastic interest. As a measure of precaution, the French general decreed that any Greeks in Malta or the Ionian Islands maintaining relations with Russia should be shot, and Greek vessels under Russian colors sunk. [217] Hence the members of the Order in Russia made, in August, a violent protest against the seizure, throwing themselves upon the Czar for a support which he eagerly promised. [218] He then drew near to Great Britain, and offered to aid Austria with troops. The emperor at first answered that nothing could be done without Prussia; and the three governments then applied themselves to obtain the accession of this kingdom to a new coalition. On the 19th of May—the very day, it may be observed, that Bonaparte sailed from Toulon—Austria and Naples signed a defensive alliance. [219] The conferences at Rastadt, so far as the emperor was concerned, were broken off on the 6th of July, although those with the empire dragged on longer. The imperial envoy, Cobentzel, at once went to Berlin, where he entered into cordial relations with the British and Russian plenipotentiaries. On the 10th of August a convention was signed between the two emperors, by which the Czar undertook to send thirty thousand troops into Galicia to support the Austrian army. Great Britain, as ever, was ready to help the cause with ships and money. Prussia refusing to join, the Russian envoy took his leave, saying: "We will make war on France with you, without you, or against you." [220]

On governments so prepared to be enkindled, yet hesitating before the prestige of French success and feeling the mutual distrust inseparable from coalitions, the news of the battle of the Nile fell like a brand among tinder. The French fleet was not only defeated, but annihilated. The Mediterranean from the Straits to the Levant was in the power of the British navy, which the total destruction of its enemy relieved from the necessity of concentration and allowed to disperse to every quarter where its efforts were needed. The greatest general and thirty thousand of the best troops France possessed, with numbers of her most brilliant officers, were thus hopelessly shut off from their country.

After the victory, conscious of its far-reaching importance, Nelson took measures to disperse the news as rapidly as his want of small vessels would permit. The "Leander" sailed on the 5th of August with the first despatches for Lord St. Vincent off Cadiz, but was on the 18th captured by the "GÉnÉreux," seventy-four, one of the two ships which had escaped from Aboukir Bay. To provide against such an accident, however, the brig "Mutine" had also been sent on the 13th to Naples, where she arrived on the 4th of September, bringing the first news that reached Europe, and which Nelson asked the British minister to see forwarded to all the other courts. The captain of the "Mutine" started the next day for England, by way of Vienna, and on the 2d of October, 1798, two full months after the battle, reached London with the first accounts.

Conscious of the effect which events in Egypt might have upon British influence in India, Nelson also sent a lieutenant, on the 10th of August, to make his way overland through Alexandretta and Aleppo to Bombay. This officer bore dispatches to the governor, informing him both of the landing and numbers of Bonaparte's expedition, and also of the fatal blow which had just befallen it. The news was most timely. The French had been actively intriguing in the native courts, and Tippoo Saib, the son and successor of Hyder Ali, Sultan of Mysore, their former ally in the days of Suffren, had openly committed himself to his father's policy. It was too late for Tippoo to recede, and he was erelong embarked in a war, which ended in April, 1799, in his death at the assault of Seringapatam and the overthrow of his kingdom; but on the other native states the striking catastrophe produced its due impression. In their operations against Tippoo the British were not embarrassed by troubles in other quarters.

"The consequences of this battle," sums up a brilliant French naval writer, "were incalculable. Our navy never recovered from this terrible blow to its consideration and its power. This was the combat which for two years delivered the Mediterranean to the English, and called thither the squadrons of Russia; which shut up our army in the midst of a rebellious population, and decided the Porte to declare against us; which put India out of the reach of our enterprise, and brought France within a hair's-breadth of her ruin; for it rekindled the scarcely extinct war with Austria, and brought Suwarrow and the Austro-Russians to our very frontiers." [221] Great Britain, the Sea Power so often and so idly accused of backwardness in confronting France, of requiring continental support before daring to move, was first to act. Long before news of the battle, before even the battle was fought, or the alliance of Austria and Russia contracted, orders had been sent to St. Vincent to detach from Nelson's force to the support of Naples, hoping there to start the little fire from which a great matter should be kindled. These "most secret orders" reached Nelson on the 15th of August. [222] He had just dispatched to Gibraltar seven of the British fleet with six of the captured French vessels, the whole under charge of Sir James Saumarez. Setting fire to the three other prizes, he intrusted the blockade of Alexandria to Captain Hood, with three ships-of-the-line, and with the three then remaining to him sailed for Naples on the 19th. From the wretched condition of his division [223] the passage took over a month; but on the 22d of September he anchored in the bay, where the renown of his achievement had preceded him.

On his way, Nelson had been informed that a Portuguese squadron, commanded by the Marquis de Niza, had entered the Mediterranean to support his operations. At his request this division, which had appeared off Alexandria on the 29th of August, [224] but refused to remain there, undertook the blockade of Malta, until such time as the repairs of the British ships should allow them to do so. The natives of the island had risen against the French on the 26th of August, and driven them from the open country into the forts of La Valetta. Niza took his station off the port, about the 20th of September, and on the 24th Sir James Saumarez appeared with his division and the prizes. The following day the two officers sent General Vaubois a summons to surrender, which was as a matter of course refused. Saumarez went on to Gibraltar; but before doing so gave the inhabitants twelve hundred muskets with ammunition, which materially assisted them in their efforts, finally successful, to deprive the enemy of the resources of the island. Nelson sent off British ships as they were ready, and himself joined the blockading force on the 24th of October, though only for a few days, his presence being necessary in Naples. The garrison was again by him formally summoned, and as formally rejected his offers. From that time until their surrender in September, 1800, the French were in strict blockade, both by land and water.

In October of this year Lord St. Vincent went to live ashore at Gibraltar, both on account of his health, and because there, being the great British naval station of the Mediterranean, he was centrally placed to receive information, to give orders, and especially to hasten, by his unflagging personal supervision, the work of supply and repair upon which the efficiency of a fleet primarily depends. The division off Cadiz, numbering generally some fifteen of the line, kept its old station watching the Spaniards, under the command of Lord Keith,—one of the most efficient and active of the generation of naval officers between St. Vincent and Nelson, to the latter of whom he was senior. Within the Mediterranean Nelson commanded, under St. Vincent. The blockade of Egypt and Malta, and co-operation with the Austrian and Neapolitan armies in the expected war, were his especial charge. He was also to further, as far as in him lay, the operations of a combined Russian and Turkish fleet, which had assembled in the Dardanelles in September, 1798, to maintain the cause of the coalition in the Levant. This fleet entered the Mediterranean in October; but instead of assuming the blockade of Alexandria and the protection of the Syrian coast, it undertook the capture of the Ionian Islands. All of these, except Corfu, fell into its power by October 10; and on the 20th Corfu, the citadel of the group, was attacked. Nelson saw this direction of the Russo-Turkish operations with disgust and suspicion. "The Porte ought to be aware," he wrote, "of the great danger at a future day of allowing the Russians to get a footing at Corfu." [225] "I was in hopes that a part of the united Turkish and Russian squadron would have gone to Egypt,—Corfu is a secondary consideration.... I have had a long conference with Kelim Effendi on the conduct likely to be pursued by the Russian Court towards the unsuspicious (I fear) and upright Turk.... A strong squadron should have been sent to Egypt to have relieved my dear friend Captain Hood; but Corfu suited Russia better." [226] At the same time Turkish troops, under the pashas whose good dispositions Bonaparte had boasted, swept away from France the former Venetian territory on the mainland, acquired by the treaty of Campo Formio.

While Bonaparte's Oriental castles were thus crumbling, through the destruction in Aboukir Bay of the foundation upon which they rested,—while Ionia was falling, Malta starving, and Egypt isolated, through the loss of the sea—the Franco-Spanish allies were deprived of another important foothold for maritime power. On the 15th of November Minorca with its valuable harbor, Port Mahon, was surrendered to a combined British military and naval expedition, quietly fitted out by St. Vincent from Gibraltar.

The year 1798 in the Mediterranean closed with these operations in progress. At its beginning France was in entire control of the land-locked sea, and scarcely a sail hostile to her, except furtive privateers, traversed its surface. When it closed, only two French ships-of-the-line fit for battle remained upon the waters, which swarmed with enemy's squadrons. Of these two, refugees from the fatal bay of Aboukir, one was securely locked in Malta, whence she never escaped; the other made its way to Toulon, and met its doom in a vain effort to carry relief to the beleaguered island.