later. In the midst of his anxieties his kindness of heart shone
forth without a trace of the tendency of sentimental gush so
irritatingly obvious in after days. Unlike most admirals of his
time, he did not live apart from his captains, but saw much of
them, and freely discussed his plans with them. He had his
reward in their devotion and perfect comprehension of what
he wished them to do. At the same time he acquired an absolute
confidence in the efficiency of his squadron, the magnificent
force which had been formed by years of successful war, and by
the careful training of his predecessors. The captains were the
band of brothers he himself had made them.
The great victory of the 1st of August 1798 (see Nile, Battle of) brought Nelson yet another wound. He was struck on the forehead by a langridge shot, and had for a time to go below. It is perhaps to be lamented in the interest of his fame that the wound was not severe enough to compel him to return home. After providing for the blockade of what remained of the French fleet in Alexandria, he sailed for Naples, and arrived there on the 22nd of September. There was no rear-admiral of any standing in the navy who could not have done what remained to be done in the Mediterranean, under the supervision of St Vincent, as well as he. For him Naples was a pitfall. There awaited him there precisely the influences to folly which he was least able to resist. He loved being loved, and was the man to think the gift a debt. He had an insatiable appetite for praise. With those weaknesses of character which caused Lord Minto, who yet never ceased to regard him with sincere friendship, to say that he was in some respects a “baby,” he was disarmed in the presence of the two women who now made a determined attempt to capture him. Emma Hamilton, who could not help endeavouring to conquer every man she met, was naturally eager to dominate one who had filled Europe with his fame. Behind Emma was the queen of Naples, Maria Carolina, a woman who had a share of the ability of her mother Maria Theresa without any of her fine moral qualities. Maria Carolina was all her life trying to fight the power of revolutionary France, with no better resources than were afforded her by the insignificant kingdom of Naples, and a husband who was the embodiment of all the faults of the Italian Bourbons. She had made use of the English minister’s wife as an instrument of political intrigue, and now she employed her to manage Nelson. We have the repeated assertions of Nelson himself in all his ample correspondence from September 1798 to July of 1800, and indeed later, to prove that he was, in his own tell-tale phrase, persuaded to “Sicilyfy” his conscience—in other words to turn his squadron into an instrument for the ambition, the revenge and the fears of Maria Carolina, the “Dear Queen” of his letters to Emma Hamilton. It is highly probable that he was secretly influenced by annoyance at the pedantry of the British government, which only gave him a barony for the splendid victory of the Nile, on the ridiculous ground that no higher title could be given to an officer who was not a commander-in-chief. All doubt as to the character of his relations with Lady Hamilton has been laid at rest by the Morrison papers. None ought ever to have existed, for, if Nelson did not love this woman in the fullest possible sense of the word, his conduct would be inexplicable on any other hypothesis than that he was an imbecile. He allowed her to waste his money, to lead him about “like a bear,” and to drag him into gambling, which he naturally hated. For her sake he offended old friends, and quarrelled with his wife in circumstances of vulgar brutality. That he believed she had borne him a child can no longer be disputed, and he carried on with her a correspondence under the name of Thompson which was apparently meant to deceive her husband, but is varied by grotesque explosions which destroy the illusion, such as it was.
In the hands of these two women, and in the intoxication produced on him by flattery, which could not be too copious or gross for his taste, Nelson speedily became a Neapolitan royalist of far greater sincerity than was to be found among the king’s subjects except in the ranks of the Lazzaroni. He gratified the headlong queen by egging her torpid husband into an exceedingly foolish attack on the French garrisons then occupying the so-called Roman republic. The collapse of the Neapolitan forces was instant and ignominious. The court fled to Palermo in December, under the protection of the British squadron. At Palermo Nelson remained directing the operations of the ships engaged in blockading Malta, then held by the garrison placed in it by Napoleon when he took it on his way to Egypt, and sinking continually deeper into his slavery to Lady Hamilton, till the spring of the following year. He was then aroused by a double call. A royalist army led by the king’s vicar-general, Fabrizio Ruffo (q.v.), had succeeded in recovering the greater part of the kingdom of Naples from the government set up by the French, and called, in the pedantic style of the revolutionary epoch, the Parthenopean republic. A French fleet commanded by Admiral Bruix entered the Mediterranean. News of the appearance of Bruix reached Nelson just as he was about to sail for Naples with the heir apparent to co-operate with Ruffo and his “Christian Army.” He immediately took steps to concentrate his ships, which had been reinforced by a small Portuguese squadron, at Marittimo on the western coast of Sicily, where he would be conveniently placed to meet the French, if they came, or to unite with the ships of Lord St Vincent. He was, however, half distraught between his sense of what was required by his duty to his own service and the obligations he had assumed towards the sovereigns of Naples. In the end he resolved to sail for Naples, this time without the crown prince, in order to carry out a mission entrusted to him by the king.
The story of Nelson’s visit to Naples in the June of 1799 will probably remain a subject for perpetual discussion. His reputation for humanity and probity is considered to depend on the view we take of his actions there and at this period. It is true that the relative importance of these episodes has been much diminished by the publication of the Morrison Papers, and that it has at all times been exaggerated. From the Morrison Papers we know that, when his passions were concerned, he was not incapable of stratagems to deceive his old friend Sir William Hamilton. It is the less incredible that he should have been willing to use deceit against persons whom he hated so fiercely as he did the Neapolitan Jacobins, in his double quality of English Tory and Neapolitan Royalist. But apart from his laxity in the course of a double adultery, his letters, written to many different people during his stay on the coasts of Naples, contain more than sufficient evidence to show that he was utterly unhinged by excitement, and was unable to estimate the real character of many of his own words and deeds. He considered himself as owing an equal allegiance to Ferdinand of Naples and to his own sovereign. His feelings towards the Jacobin subjects of his Italian king are expressed in terms which bear a remarkable likeness to the rhetoric of the Jacobins of France when they were most vigorously engaged in ridding their country of aristocrats. To Troubridge he writes: “Send me word some proper heads are taken off, this alone will comfort me.” To St Vincent he reports that “Our friend Troubridge had a present made him the other day of the head of a Jacobin, and makes an apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it here.” Some allowance may be made for a rude taste in jocularity, but it is impossible to mistake the scream of fury in Nelson’s letters, imitated from the style of Lady Hamilton, who in these things was the sycophant of the queen. A man who allowed his thoughts to dwell in an atmosphere of hysterical ferocity, and was above all a man of action, was well on the way to interpret his words into deeds. It was while he was in this heated state that he was sent to preside over the fall of the Parthenopean republic at the end of June 1799.
King Ferdinand had not been unwilling to offer terms to those of his subjects who had joined with the French to establish the republic, so long as he was under the influence of fear. But when the French had been defeated in northern Italy and had left the Republicans to their own resources, he became more anxious to make an example. In the early parts of June he heard that Ruffo was inclined to clemency, and grew very eager to prevent any such mistake. No more effectual way of
