ELEVEN
The West Indies
1798-1804
More than two months passed before the news reached London that Nelson's squadron had annihilated the French fleet at the mouth of the Nile. The first despatch which Nelson sent was intercepted by the enemy. On 6 August he had sent his flag captain Edward Berry in the Leander, under the command of Captain Thompson, with his official report addressed to Lord St Vincent at Cadiz. In light winds off the coast of Crete the Leander, a 50-gun ship, was attacked by a powerful French warship, Le Généreux of 74 guns, one of the ships which had managed to escape from Aboukir Bay the day after the battle. In the ferocious action which followed, the Leander was reduced to a dismasted wreck and forced to surrender. Tim Stewart, one of her lower deck gunners, was scathing about the way the French ship was handled. Long before she was in range she wasted powder and shot by blazing away to left and right:
We fought six hours; just think of that. Why, if she had handled her guns in a seamanlike manner, she ought to have sunk us in little more than six minutes. We had to cut through the main topsail, lying over our larboard side to make room for the muzzles of the guns, for our ship was quite a wreck - not a stick standing - but still the brave hearts would not give in.
The effectiveness of the Leanders gunnery was grimly demonstrated by the fact that Le Généreux lost about 100 dead and more than 150 wounded from her enormous crew of more than 900 men. The Leander, with a crew of 282, lost 35 killed and 57 wounded, and when Captain Thompson eventually faced a court martial for the loss of his ship he was praised for his 'gallant and almost unprecedented defence' against a far superior force.
Nelson had initially sent only one copy of his despatch because he was short of frigates but on 12 August he decided to send a duplicate copy to Sir William Hamilton in Naples. He promoted his flag lieutenant, Thomas Capel, to the rank of master and commander and sent him on his way in the brig Mutine. Capel arrived in the Bay of Naples on 4 September where his news was received with a sense of relief and rejoicing which was soon to be echoed all over Europe. Capel wrote, 'I am totally unable to express the joy that appeared in everybody's countenance and the burst of applause and acclamation we received.' Sir William Hamilton wrote to Nelson, 'It is impossible, my dear Sir Horatio, for any words to express, in any degree, the joy that the account of the glorious and complete victory you gained . . . occasioned in this court and in this city.' Lady Hamilton fainted when she heard the news and then she too wrote to Nelson to tell him she was delirious with happiness: 'Good God, what a victory! Never, never' has there been anything half so glorious, half so compleat . . .'
In Vienna the Chancellor 'manifested the greatest pleasure at this memorable event' and in Berlin a British diplomat passed the news on to the King of Prussia and reported that the joy was universal. It was widely recognised that Nelson's action was more than a decisive naval victory. It was the first serious check to the hitherto invincible French nation and gave fresh heart to all the opponents of revolutionary France. During the course of one long night Nelson's squadron had eliminated French naval power in the Mediterranean and, although Napoleon would later institute a massive shipbuilding programme, the French Navy never recovered from the blow.
When Capel eventually arrived in London on the morning of 2 October and delivered Nelson's despatch to the Admiralty the reaction and the rejoicings eclipsed the celebrations which had greeted the news of the Battle of the Glorious First of June four years previously. Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, immediately passed on the news to the Lord Mayor of London and by midday the church bells were ringing all over the capital and guns were firing salutes in Hyde Park and the Tower. Lady Spencer wrote, 'My heart is absolutely bursting with different sensations of joy, of gratitude, of pride, of every emotion that ever warmed the bosom of a British woman,' and she reported that huge crowds had gathered in the streets. 'London is mad - absolutely mad - Capel was followed by a crowd of several thousands, huzzaring the whole way . . .'
Lord Spencer sent a messenger to convey the news to Weymouth where the King was taking the waters. According to the newspapers the messenger was held up on the road by a highwayman who decided not to rob him when he learnt of the contents of the despatches and told him 'to proceed with all possible expedition with the good news to his Majesty'. The King was so delighted by the news that he read Nelson's letters aloud four times to different noblemen and gentlemen on the esplanade at Weymouth. All over the country there were celebrations. Hotels and shops were illuminated, and patriotic songs were sung by audiences in theatres. In Norwich an ox was roasted in the Market Place and in the village of Chew Magna, near Bristol, 'a sheep was roasted whole and given, with plenty of beer, to the populace'.
One of the few people to take the news calmly was Napoleon who was now marooned in Egypt with an army of 30,000 troops. 'Well, gentlemen, now we are obliged to accomplish great things,' he told his companions, 'The sea of course, of which we are no longer master, separates us from our homeland, but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia.' He told them that they had the men and the munitions and they would found a great empire. This he signally failed to do, but in a matter of months he left his mark on Egypt. He began work on a hospital for the poor, and established quarantine stations to check the spread of bubonic plague which was endemic in the country; he built windmills to raise water and grind corn; he set up a postal service; and he erected the first street lamps in Cairo. He also established the Institute of Egypt and it was the work of the French scientists, historians and archaeologists working for the institute which was to prove his most lasting legacy. They measured the Pyramids, they studied the history, zoology and anthropology of Egypt and eventually published their findings in ten magnificently illustrated folio volumes. Above all they discovered at Rosetta a basalt stone with inscriptions which led to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs and revealed for scholars and the Egyptian people themselves the hitherto unknown world of ancient Egypt.
Napoleon's attempt to govern a Muslim country which was twice the size of France was never likely to succeed and was doomed when he had to return to the battlefield within months of his arrival in Egypt. In October 1798 the Turks declared war on France and that winter they assembled an army in Syria and prepared to invade Egypt. Napoleon marched his army northwards, captured the fortress at Gaza, took the town of Jaffa, and then laid siege to the medieval fortress of Acre. A British force under the command of the dashing Sir Sydney Smith reinforced the Turkish troops defending the town and between them they successfully resisted the French bombardment. After two months Napoleon withdrew his troops, crossed the Sinai desert and returned to Cairo. His soldiers were demoralised and, although they went on to defeat the Turks at Mount Tabor and at Aboukir, Napoleon decided he must abandon them and return to Paris. He had learnt that the French republic was in serious danger from within and without. France's economy had collapsed, civil servants were unpaid, most of the artisans in Paris were unemployed, and bandits were roaming the countryside. And a new coalition of France's enemies, including Austria, Britain and Russia, was threatening her borders. On 22 August 1799, a year after the Battle of the Nile, he embarked on a frigate and arrived in Paris on 16 October. Within three weeks he had organised a coup, disbanded the ruling Directorate, and set himself up as First Consul. Far from being finished by the ill-fated Egyptian expedition he was on the threshold of an era which would lead to him extending his rule across Europe and being proclaimed Emperor of France.