The Life of Nelson, Volume 1
TextOn the 9th of July, Keith wrote again, from Port Mahon, a letter which Nelson received on the 19th. He said that he was satisfied that the enemy's intentions were directed neither against the Two Sicilies, nor to the reinforcement of their army in Egypt; that, on the contrary, there was reason to believe they were bound out of the Straits. "I judge it necessary that all, or the greatest part of the force under your Lordship's orders, should quit the Island of Sicily, and repair to Minorca, for the purpose of protecting that Island during the necessary absence of His Majesty's squadron under my command, or for the purpose of co-operating with me against the combined force of the enemy, wherever it may be necessary." The commander-in-chief, in short, wished to mass his forces, for the necessities of the general campaign, as he considered them. Nelson now flatly refused obedience, on the ground of the local requirements in his part of the field. "Your Lordship, at the time of sending me the order, was not informed of the change of affairs in the Kingdom of Naples, and that all our marines and a body of seamen are landed, in order to drive the French scoundrels out of the Kingdom, which, with God's blessing will very soon be effected, when a part of this squadron shall be immediately sent to Minorca; but unless the French are at least drove from Capua, I think it right not to obey your Lordship's order for sending down any part of the squadron under my orders. I am perfectly aware of the consequences of disobeying the orders of my commander-in-chief." It cannot be said that the offensiveness of the act of disobedience is tempered by any very conciliatory tone in the words used. The reason for disobedience makes matters rather worse. "As I believe the safety of the Kingdom of Naples depends at the present moment on my detaining the squadron, I have no scruple in deciding that it is better to save the Kingdom of Naples and risk Minorca, than to risk the Kingdom of Naples to save Minorca." When he thus wrote, Nelson knew that Bruix had joined the Spanish fleet in Cartagena, making a combined force of forty ships, to which Keith, after stripping Minorca, could oppose thirty-one.
None of Nelson's letters reached Keith until long after he had left the Mediterranean, which probably prevented the matter being brought to a direct issue between the two, such as would have compelled the Admiralty to take some decisive action. On the 10th of July the commander-in-chief sailed from Port Mahon for Cartagena, following on the tracks of the allied fleets, which he pursued into the Atlantic and to Brest, where they succeeded in entering on the 13th of August, just twenty-four hours before the British came up. The narrow margin of this escape inevitably suggests the thought, of how much consequence might have been the co-operation of the dozen ships Nelson could have brought. It is true, certainly, as matters turned out, that even had he obeyed, they could not have accompanied Keith, nor in the event did any harm come to Minorca; but there was no knowledge in Nelson's possession that made an encounter between the two great fleets impossible, nor was it till three days after his former refusal to obey, that he knew certainly that Keith had given up all expectation of a junction with himself. Then, on the 22d of July, he received two letters dated the 14th, and couched in tones so peremptory as to suggest a suspicion that no milder words would enforce obedience—that his Commander-in-chief feared that nothing short of cast-iron orders would drag him away from the Neapolitan Court. "Your Lordship is hereby required and directed to repair to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part, of the force under your Lordship's command, for the protection of that island, as I shall, in all probability, have left the Mediterranean before your Lordship will receive this. Keith." The second letter of the same date ended with the words: "I therefore trust the defence of Minorca to your Lordship, and repeat my directions that the ships be sent for its protection." On the receipt of these, though Capua had not yet surrendered, Nelson at once sent Duckworth with four ships-of-the-line to Minorca, detaining only their marines for the land operations.
It seems scarcely necessary to say that, while an officer in subordinate command should have the moral courage to transcend or override his orders in particular instances—each of which rests upon its own merits, and not upon any general rule that can be formulated—it would be impossible for military operations to be carried on at all, if the commander-in-chief were liable to be deliberately defied and thwarted in his combinations, as Keith was in this case. It does not appear that Nelson knew the circumstances which Keith was considering; he only knew what the conditions were about Naples, and he thought that the settlement of the kingdom might be prevented by the departure of several of his ships. In this opinion, in the author's judgment, his views were exaggerated, and colored by the absorbing interest he had come to take in the royal family and their fortunes, linked as these were with the affections of a particular woman; but, even granting that his apprehensions were well founded, he was taking upon himself to determine, not merely what was best for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but what was best for the whole Mediterranean command. It was not within his province to decide whether Minorca or Naples was the more important. That was the function of the commander-in-chief. Had the latter, while leaving Nelson's force unchanged, directed him to follow a particular line of operations in the district committed to him, it is conceivable that circumstances, unknown to his superior, might have justified him in choosing another; but there was nothing in the conditions that authorized his assumption that he could decide for the whole command. And this is not the less true, because Nelson was in the general a man of far sounder judgment and keener insight than Keith, or because his intuitions in the particular instance were more accurate, as they possibly were. He defended his course on the ground, so frequently and so erroneously taken, that his intentions were right. "I am so confident," he wrote to the Admiralty, "of the uprightness of my intentions for his Majesty's service, and for that of his Sicilian Majesty, which I consider as the same, that, with all respect, I submit myself to the judgment of my superiors." Four years later, in 1803, he used the following singular expressions concerning his conduct at this period: "I paid more attention to another sovereign than my own; therefore the King of Naples' gift of Bronté to me, if it is not now settled to my advantage, and to be permanent, has cost me a fortune, and a great deal of favour which I might have enjoyed, and jealousy which I should have avoided. I repine not on those accounts. I did my duty, to the Sicilifying my own conscience, and I am easy."89 "As I have often before risked my life for the good cause," he told his old friend the Duke of Clarence, "so I with cheerfulness did my commission: for although a military tribunal may think me criminal, the world will approve my conduct." With such convictions, he might, if condemned, as he almost inevitably must have been, have met his fate with the cheerfulness of a clear conscience; but no military tribunal can possibly accept a man's conscience as the test of obedience.
The Admiralty, who had sent Keith out knowing that St. Vincent, after three arduous years, meant soon to retire, could not of course acquiesce in Nelson's thus overriding the man they had chosen to be his commander-in-chief. "Their Lordships do not, from any information now before them, see sufficient reason to justify your having disobeyed the orders you had received from your Commanding Officer, or having left Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked, without having any naval force to protect it." To this measured rebuke was added some common-sense counsel upon the pernicious practice of jeopardizing the personnel of a fleet, the peculiar trained force so vitally necessary, and so hard to replace, in petty operations on shore. "Although in operations on the sea-coast, it may frequently be highly expedient to land a part of the seamen of the squadron, to co-operate with and to assist the army, when the situation will admit of their being immediately re-embarked, if the squadron should be called away to act elsewhere [as Keith had called it], or if information of the approach of an enemy's fleet should be received,—yet their Lordships by no means approve of the seamen being landed to form a part of an army to be employed in operations at a distance from the coast, where, if they should have the misfortune to be defeated, they might be prevented from returning to the ships, and the squadron be thereby rendered so defective, as to be no longer capable of performing the services required of it; and I have their Lordships' commands to signify their directions to your Lordship not to employ the seamen in like manner in future."
It was evident that the Admiralty did not fully share Nelson's attachment to the royal house of Naples, nor consider the service of the King of the Two Sicilies the same as that of the King of Great Britain. Earl Spencer's private letter, while careful of Nelson's feelings, left no room to doubt that he was entirely at one with his colleagues in their official opinion. Nelson winced and chafed under the double rebuke, but he was not in a condition to see clearly any beams in his own eye. "I observe with great pain that their Lordships see no cause which could justify my disobeying the orders of my commanding officer, Lord Keith;" but the motives he again alleges are but the repetition of those already quoted. He fails wholly to realize that convictions which would justify a man in going to a martyr's fate may be wholly inadequate to sap the fundamental military obligation of obedience. "My conduct is measured by the Admiralty, by the narrow rule of law, when I think it should have been done by that of common sense. I restored a faithful ally by breach of orders; Lord Keith lost a fleet by obedience against his own sense. Yet as one is censured the other must be approved. Such things are." As a matter of fact, as before said, it was by departing from St. Vincent's orders that Keith lost the French fleet. Nor did Nelson's mind work clearly on the subject. Thwarted and fretted as he continually was by the too common, almost universal, weakness, which deters men from a bold initiative, from assuming responsibility, from embracing opportunity, he could not draw the line between that and an independence of action which would convert unity of command into anarchy. "Much as I approve of strict obedience to orders, yet to say that an officer is never, for any object, to alter his orders, is what I cannot comprehend." But what rational man ever said such a thing? "I find few think as I do,—but to obey orders is all perfection! What would my superiors direct, did they know what is passing under my nose? To serve my King and to destroy the French I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring, and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order." There is so much that is sound in these words, and yet so much confusion might arise in applying them, that scarcely any stronger evidence could be given that each case must rest on its own merits; and that no general rule can supplant the one general principle of obedience, by which alone unity and concentration of effort, the great goal of all military movement, can be obtained.
During this period of agitation and excitement, Nelson's health did not show the favorable symptoms that usually attended a call to exertion. Much may be attributed to a Mediterranean summer, especially after the many seasons he had passed in that sea; but it can readily be believed that such exceptional responsibilities as he had just assumed could not but tell, even upon his resolute and fearless temper. "I am really sorry," wrote Troubridge to him, from the siege of St. Elmo, "to see your Lordship so low-spirited, all will go well;" and a few days later, "Your Lordship must endeavour to fret as little as possible—we shall succeed. His Majesty's arrival will relieve your Lordship; and if he punishes the guilty, the people will be happy." The day after he had refused to obey Keith's order, he wrote to him, "I am truly so very unwell that I have not the power of writing so much as I could wish;" and the next day, to the Admiralty, he makes the same excuse, adding, "I am writing in a fever, and barely possible to keep out of bed." "My dear friend," he tells Locker, "I am so ill that I can scarcely sit up; yet I will not let the courier go off without assuring you that all your kindnesses to me are fresh in my memory.... May God Almighty grant you, my revered friend, that health and happiness which has never yet been attained by your affectionate, grateful friend, Nelson." It cannot but be surmised that he did not feel that profound conviction of right, which had sustained him on previous occasions. The disquiet indicated resembles rather that attending the uncertainties of the Nile campaign. As Colonel Stewart noticed, two years later, "With him mind and health invariably sympathized."