Nelson: Britannia's God of War (10 page)

Nelson was now in command of the naval force at Calvi, while General Sir Charles Stuart, Dundas’s replacement, commanded the troops. Nelson joined Stuart at Bastia, picked up 150 troops and their equipment, stopped for further supplies at San Fiorenzo, then set sail. They landed a few miles from Calvi on 17 June. After inspecting the
defences Stuart decided to land the troops, sailors and guns for the siege. Calvi, with three outlying works and a town wall, posed some problems, and there was little time for finesse. No sooner had the forces got ashore, moreover, than a gale drove the ships out to sea, cutting off contact for three days.

Veterans from Bastia knew that another siege would require large supplies of shot, powder and cannon. There were few surpluses so far from home, so Nelson checked with Hood before landing guns. The batteries were armed with French twenty-six-pounders from the
Commerce
de
Marseilles
,
twenty-four-pounders from
Agamemnon
and the Neapolitan mortars.
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Hood, meanwhile, had been given good reason to think the French fleet had been reinforced from Brest and so had joined Hotham. On 10 June, he had chased the French ships into Gourjean Bay, believing that a direct attack with nearly two-to-one superiority would overwhelm them. But the wind failed, giving the French two days to improvise shore batteries and gunboats. Hood reluctantly accepted the judgement of a Council of War that he could not get at the French in Gourjean Bay. Leaving Hotham to cover the French ships, he returned to Calvi.
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There were problems at Calvi: General Stuart, who had initially shown more enthusiasm for joint operations than his predecessors, was now taking the same narrow-minded, wearyingly critical attitude, threatening to throw up his command if Hood did not explain his pursuit of the French fleet.
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On 27 June, after beating off a sortie by the garrison at Calvi, the British installed their guns and prepared to open fire. Nelson continued the practice he had adopted at Bastia, of sending Hood a daily journal of events, much to the annoyance of the army. On 4 July the first battery opened on the outlying fort of Monachique. Stuart immediately requested 250 sailors to move his shot and stores. An attempt to advance a new work against the Mozzello fort that night failed because the army officer in charge started too late. However, Stuart asked Nelson to build a work inside the Revallata Point to open on the seaward flank of the French defences, to draw fire from the main battery. He also managed to cover the construction of a new work against the Mozzello by feinting an attack on the advanced work Monteciesco. As the fifth of the six guns was being placed in the new work the French realised their error and opened a heavy fire of grapeshot. The naval officer placing the gun, Walter Serocold, was
killed.
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For Nelson his death was glorious: ‘He fell as an officer should, in the service of his country.’
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Nelson himself did not escape. The French abandoned the Monteciesco battery on 11 July, but opened a heavy fire on new British works at daylight the following morning. Nelson was hit in the face by a shower of sand and small stones thrown up from the breastwork by a French round shot. An inch or two higher and it would have taken off his head.
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Nelson made light of the wound, treating it as a badge of honour. He remained ashore, reporting himself ‘a little hurt’.
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But the sight of his eye would not recover: in addition to rupturing a blood vessel he appears to have damaged the optic nerve.
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The eye was not disfigured, although the pupil was unusually large. The disability was not fatal to his career, but it must have affected depth perception and the judgement of distance, valuable assets to a commander making critical decisions involving time and distance in battle. Nelson quickly adjusted, however, and came to rely on the eyes of his subordinates. It may be surmised that among his many qualities, Thomas Hardy had excellent vision.

Stuart, for all the skill with which he had out-thought the French commander, lacked the youth and optimism that underpinned Nelson’s activity. The siege of Calvi had hardly begun before he was writing home for permission to retire once it was over.
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Though Hood’s decision to remain and good progress in the batteries temporarily improved his outlook a few days later, Stuart had protested vehemently when Hood suggested summoning the garrison. Taken aback, Hood unburdened himself in confidential letters to Nelson. He was concerned by the rapid progress made by the French fleet, which threatened to upset the strategy of the theatre, discouraging allies and crippling British operations. No sooner had this problem passed than Stuart was complaining that Nelson had revealed his plan to storm the key Mozzello outwork to Hood. The senior officers ashore were uncomfortably aware that Hood relied on Nelson for daily reports on operations, and that they depended on naval support. Hood advised Nelson and Captain Hallowell to keep their own counsel.

The capture of Fort Mozzello, the key defensive position in front of the town, and the Fountain battery on the night of 18 July cheered the soldiers, especially as they kept the sailors out of the action.
³²
Although the squadron off Toulon reported that no more French ships had arrived, Hood had become obsessed by the idea that a detachment
from Brest was coming, to outnumber his fleet. ‘This makes the speedy reduction of Calvi of the utmost importance’, he wrote.
³³
Although Hood shared his concerns with Stuart, the General merely asked for more sailors to help ashore, as his troops were tired. Stuart’s pessimism even affected Nelson, who redoubled his efforts to build fresh batteries and persuade Hood to spare more powder. Hood disagreed with the military prognosis, and wondered what the extra men were for.
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In reality the siege was going well: superior skill and resources favoured the British, even if the harsh terrain and lack of natural cover forced them to build their batteries from barrels packed with earth. Stuart’s mood continued to be dark, however, and truce negotiations failed. After a galley broke through the blockade the artillery attack was redoubled, and on 1 August a flag of truce was hung out on the city wall. It was not a moment too soon for the British, who were sickening under the enervating Corsican ‘Lion Sun’.
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It mattered little how far the capitulation was secured by the bombardment, and how far by starvation: the British had no time to sit and wait for the French to run out of rations. With a large and complex theatre to command, Hood could not afford to have his fleet tied down by a prolonged blockade while the French were preparing for sea and active on the mainland. The balancing act had succeeded, however: Hood had kept the French fleet blocked up, taken Corsica and saved Italy. These prizes were secure while the British commanded the sea.
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The French marched out of Calvi on 10 August, to be shipped home. Nelson was already hard at work getting his guns and men back on board the
Agamemnon
,
anxious not to miss the fleet action that he expected now Hood was ‘at liberty to look at the French fleet’. First he had to organise transports for the enemy soldiers and take over the captured frigates in the bay,
³⁷
yet he found time to compile a full report on the siege and the prospects of the new British territory for Clarence.
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That done, he hastened away to Leghorn to overhaul his tired and neglected ship in the best refit facility this side of Plymouth. Hood and Stuart argued about how many troops should be sent to help man the fleet, while Moore carped that the removal of the sailors left all the work to his men. It was an unedifying conclusion to a successful siege, which had secured the island for the Anglo-Corsican partnership.

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After the siege, Corsica became subject to the British crown, which took over responsibility for external policy, but the island retained the
legislative assembly that had voted for the union – a compromise consciously modelled on Britain’s relationship with Ireland. Elliot was appointed Viceroy, but the arrangements were loose, reflecting the lack of opportunity for a thorough discussion of policy in London and the impossibility of responding to local events from Westminster. Once again Hood had triumphed, against astonishing odds, with a little help from the army.

Nelson’s role in the capture was useful, though by no means as important as most of his biographers have implied. Yet he had derived great benefit from the Corsican campaign, which formed the last stage in his education in strategy and leadership. It had earned him the opportunity for an independent command, no small achievement when there were seven admirals in the fleet. The two sieges were hard and dangerous, but they made an impression in the right quarters. Hood found that he could trust Nelson to act on his own, a marked contrast to the older colleagues who had signally failed to meet his standards off Gourjean Bay. Elliot, too, had formed a high opinion of this dynamic young captain, and this relationship would play a major role in Nelson’s strategic education.

Nelson, in turn, had seen enough inter-service cooperation to convince him that the army was slow-moving, hidebound and negative. The generals would not see that command of the sea was the key to Britain’s Mediterranean strategy: the army was too small, too inexperienced and too widely spread to be used for large operations. Stuart, though an improvement on his predecessors, had no grander concept of strategy, and failed to grasp the points about the wider theatre that both Hood and Elliot were at pains to explain. As Nelson observed:

Not that this rivalry was without potential penalties: ‘I may perhaps suffer by it.’
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The wider consequences of Corsica were complex. With the island secure, the British fleet could act on the Italian coast, in support of Sardinia and Austria. However, the British had very few disposable troops, and most were being sent to Holland or the West Indies. Instead the ministers were looking to their allies for Mediterranean manpower. The failure to wipe out the French fleet when the opportunity
allowed would complicate the British position for the next four years. The presence of a powerful, if not particularly capable enemy fleet forced successive British commanders to keep their battle fleet concentrated, and close to Toulon, leaving precious few resources to exploit command of the sea or cooperate with allies.

British Mediterranean policy throughout the Revolutionary War period was crippled by the priority given to the West Indies, the Low Countries, French royalists on the Atlantic coast and the need to build new coalitions. Only when Austria requested a fleet did the subject attract serious Cabinet consideration. Otherwise the ministers were content to leave the theatre alone, and rarely troubled themselves to reply to despatches from the admiral, or the Viceroy of Corsica. This forced the local authorities to develop much of their programme alone, a task that suited imperious optimistic men like Hood, and able statesmen of Elliot’s stamp, but destroyed lesser men.

By the autumn of 1795 Pitt had lost interest in Corsica, seeing it as a source of problems with Spain, rather than the key to the Mediterranean. No one in London accepted Elliot’s analysis that the island gave the British control of the Franco-Italian coast, while the loss of Hood and the resignation of Stuart left the military commands in the hands of political cowards.
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For Nelson, Corsica had been crucial to the formation of his concept of theatre strategy, influenced by Hood and Elliot, who demonstrated how the wider patterns of war and politics combined to make strategy, and where the power of the fleet could be most effectively employed. For the rest of his career Nelson sought bases in the Mediterranean to replace the lost British province of Corsica. In his time he secured Sicily and Malta, watched Minorca return to British control, and later pressed for Sardinia to be occupied. The battery commander who served at Bastia and Calvi would mature to replace his beloved mentor. Hood, who had returned home in November after his Corsican triumph, could rest easy at Greenwich while Nelson held his old command. He had done well to pass the mantle of theatre command to an officer formed in his own image, and yet entirely his own man.