Nelson (80 page)

A more distinguished party stepped upon Corsican soil on 14 January. One of the trio was Sir Gilbert Elliot, an urbane diplomat soon to rule the island as Britain’s viceroy, and with him were two senior army officers, Lieutenant Colonel John Moore (later the hero and victim of Corunna) and Major George Frederick Koehler. They were charged with preparing the ground for an invasion. Elliot ascertained that Paoli was willing to swap one set of masters for another and allow Corsica to become a British protectorate in return for the expulsion of the French, while the army officers studied the military situation. They were told that the French had 2,600 men on the island (actually an understatement), and concluded that though Calvi would be a hard nut to crack there was ‘every reason to hope for success’. At about the same time Nelson was landing Lieutenant Andrews, where he spent three days practising his French upon the partisans, assuring Paoli that Hood would help him and looking for suitable places to disembark men and stores.
⁴

For Hood the liberation of Corsica was imperative, but the job had to be done quickly. Now that a residue of the French fleet was at large and the Jacobins were counterattacking on land, the British fleet had to be stretched thin to meet its many obligations east of Gibraltar. Hood could not tie forces up in Corsica indefinitely.

At Hyères, Hood gathered his forces. Sixty sail of warships and transports were needed, but men were scarce. The fleet was so under
strength that Hood applied for help to Malta and Naples, while hundreds of British soldiers from the 11th, 25th, 30th and 69th regiments were serving as auxiliary marines on the ships. Altogether, even reinforced by the 50th and 51st regiments from Gibraltar at the end of 1793, the British had no more than three thousand of their soldiers cooperating with the fleet. A few French royalists joined them, but after the repossession of Toulon there was a reluctance to rely on foreign soldiers.

While Hood fought with logistics, the invasion of Corsica suddenly thrust Captain Nelson to the forefront of the Mediterranean campaign. His blockade of the island, previously simply precautionary, became an operation of the first importance, paving the way for the British landings by gathering intelligence, encouraging the partisans and reducing the resources of the French garrisons. In recognition Hood increased the size of Nelson’s command. During January four frigates, the
Juno
,
Romulus
,
L’Aigle
and
Tartar
, the twenty-four-gun
La Billette
and the
Fortune
gunboat joined his squadron, though Hood was soon having to recall the
Lowestoffe
. By trying to ensure that no more than one ship at a time reprovisioned at Leghorn, Nelson tightened his vigil, focusing his efforts on clearing the coasts of enemy gunboats and starving St Fiorenzo and Calvi of supplies.
⁵

It was gruelling, wintry work. On 8 January the first of six days of gales, lashing rain and awesome seas savaged the ships. ‘Such a series of bad weather I never experienced,’ observed a sodden Nelson. But while his ships were driven a little to leeward they kept their order and station. Indeed, the Corsican campaign was turning
Agamemnon
into the finest battleship in the Mediterranean, honing its seamanship and gunnery to perfection in daily and difficult encounters. When Hood’s fleet eventually joined him towards the end of the month Nelson’s men demonstrated their worth in another burst of blustering gales. On the 27th, when even such a seasoned blockader as the
Leda
parted company under signals of distress, Nelson noted in his journal the ‘appearance’ of a storm. ‘Made the ship as snug as possible,’ he wrote. ‘All night it blew such a gale as is very seldom felt. Neither canvas [n]or rope could stand it. All our sails blew in pieces. Made a great deal of water. A most amazing heavy sea. The ship under bare poles.’ When the tempest peaked it drove every ship in the fleet off the station bar two – a frigate and the
Agamemnon
. Nelson fell back to Leghorn for brief repairs, but must have been satisfied that the watch had been maintained in such difficult circumstances.
⁶

Day in, day out Nelson’s ships stuck to their task, fair weather or foul, though they had their reverses. On the morning of 12 January two of the French warships, the
Melpomene
and
Le Mignonne
, broke out of St Fiorenzo and fought their way southwest into Calvi, exchanging shots with the
Leda
and
Meleager
as they did so. The French had only succeeded in shifting strength from one port to another but Nelson was disappointed. ‘I had so closely blockaded Calvi that they must have surrendered to me at discretion,’ he complained. ‘Not a vessel before got in for the six weeks I have been stationed here. This supply will keep them a week or two longer.’ Nelson exaggerated the effect of his blockade but not entirely, and Hood informed superiors that ‘repeated information’ testified that provisions in Corsica were in short supply.
⁷

Also weighing on Nelson’s mind were disturbing rumours that the eighty-gun
Duquesne
and a dozen small warships and twelve thousand men were planning to dash from Nice to relieve the beleaguered Corsican garrisons. Fortunately, his squadron only had to brush with the interfering French forces from Nice once. On 17 January, Nelson sent the
Leda
and
Amphitrite
in chase of a French warship and galley trying to get into Calvi with flour and other supplies. The wind dropped, and the galley’s sweeps pulled her inshore and out of gunshot, but as the breeze improved the British worked so close to the warship,
L’Armée de Italie
of eighteen guns and swivels, that her crew set her on fire and jumped over the side. The British lowered boats, threw hawsers onto the stricken craft and towed it into deeper water, but the fire could not be extinguished and she was run upon a reef to burn.
⁸

Reluctant to confine his attention to shipping, Nelson also began to launch amphibious raids upon French positions ashore. A tip-off that four hundred sacks of flour were stored at the only mill situated near St Fiorenzo led him to the first of these operations on 21 January. Nelson arrived offshore the previous evening with the
Lowestoffe
and the
Meleager
frigates in company and the
Fortune
gunboat. During the night the ships were in danger of being wrecked upon the rocky coast by large seas, but at six in the morning one hundred and twenty seamen and sailors were rowed to a landing place under the cover of the gunboat. A sputtering opposition was dispersed, and up to a thousand French regulars rushed by sea and land from St Fiorenzo and Bastia arrived too late. Nelson’s raiders had burned the watermill, thrown the flour into the sea and gone. In addition the British also
intercepted a pair of tartans trying to ship provisions, and two days later destroyed a third vessel.
⁹

Nelson’s operations were small-scale but significant, fine-tuning the skills of the British crews, withering the resources of the French and gathering intelligence for Hood. When the task force itself arrived on 25 January it was immediately scattered by the gales and blown towards Elba, and not until 7 February did fourteen hundred British soldiers begin splashing ashore in Mortella Bay at St Fiorenzo. The landings, supervised by Linzee, were clumsily made, according to Nelson. ‘Expedition ought to be the universal word and deed,’ he grumbled. Nevertheless, a mixed force of soldiers and sailors were soon pulling guns into place to attack the forts at St Fiorenzo while the fleet occupied the bay.
¹⁰

The arrival of the fleet with large numbers of senior officers threatened Nelson’s independence, but Hood had been impressed by his services and immediately transferred his small squadron to Bastia. When St Fiorenzo fell Hood intended to advance upon Bastia, a much stronger position, and once again Nelson would prime the assault with a preliminary blockade.

Thrilled to be free of moribund superiors, the captain of the
Agamemnon
happily embraced his new duties. As the pulse of his life quickened with renewed purpose the last lingering charms of domesticity slipped gently into the background. The campaign generated the excitement he loved and put him at the epicentre of the naval war in the Mediterranean, opening a way to martial glory. ‘We are still in the busy scene of war,’ he told his uncle, ‘a situation in which I own I feel pleasure, more especially as all my actions have given great satisfaction to my commander-in-chief.’
¹¹

On the eastern coast of Corsica, at the foot of the mountainous Cape Corse peninsula jutting confidently northwards into the sea, was Bastia. It was a large town in those days, the largest in the island, containing more than eight thousand citizens, and until recently had been the Corsican capital. Nevertheless, when Nelson first gave Bastia his close attention it was unusually well stocked with corn, animals and the coal needed to heat shot because it was close to supplies in Italy. Even with British cruisers on the prowl, it was comparatively easy for small boats to run to Bastia from the neutral islands of Elba and Capraia.

Moreover, Bastia was formidably fortified. A high wall skirted the sea, punctured with twenty or more embrasures bristling with guns. Inside the harbour, behind a fine mole, nestled
La Flêche
, the corvette from the squadron Nelson had engaged off Sardinia, but now stripped of her cannons to strengthen the batteries ashore. The entrance to the harbour was relatively narrow, passing between a lighthouse at the end of the mole on the right and an ancient citadel with its keep on the left, the latter mounting a formidable array of artillery. As Captain Nelson’s glass swept above the lines of white houses to the low hills between the rear of the town and the mountains towering grandly behind, he also picked out four stone forts – Monte Sorrato, Lacroix, Gaetano and Straforelle, small, clumsily constructed, but for all that of considerable strength. Above those he counted three more works, perched precariously on the heights. Closer to the sea front, the approach to the town in the north was guarded by an appreciable redoubt, Camp de Cabanelle, while south of Bastia, close to malarial swamps stood a command post, Camp St Michel, supported by new batteries. If these fortifications were resolutely defended they would not be overcome without difficulty. Nelson consoled himself with a notion that only about four hundred regulars and sixteen hundred irregulars manned the town’s defences, and that provisions and supplies were daily being eroded by his blockade.
¹²

In addition to the garrison at Bastia the French had small forces spotted about the area, especially at Rogliano, commanding Cape Corse. It seemed obvious to Captain Nelson that if the local peasantry could be convinced that the balance of power had changed and their former French masters were impotent, it would be possible to isolate the smaller enemy detachments and compel them to withdraw. In addition to his war on supplies, therefore, he encouraged resistance against the French at every point. He loosed the frigates
Lowestoffe
,
Tartar
,
L’Aigle
,
Romulus
and
Dido
, and
Tysiphone
sloop and the
Fox
cutter upon the enemy supply lines, while the
Agamemnon
concentrated upon lightning raids on outlying enemy posts, shredding the fringes of French control and encouraging the peasantry. These attacks attract little comment today, but it was the experience of numerous small successes that made the
Agamemnon
a crack force. The constant manipulation of the ship about a treacherous coastline, the lowering and raising of boats, the sallies ashore, the trust and reliance that developed in the company as each man learned his part, the solidarity forged in shared dangers, and the facility with which guns and sails were handled, all
accrued skill, resolution and know-how that no French ship could achieve sitting in port.
¹³

Nelson’s new campaign opened at the small port of Centuri. He had heard that a Genoese vessel seized by the
Lowestoffe
in January, but subsequently lost in the gales, had fallen into the hands of the French at Centuri. Several wine vessels were also hiding in the port, ready to sail for St Fiorenzo. On 5 February the
Agamemnon
,
Lowestoffe
(Captain William Wolseley),
L’Aigle
(Captain Samuel Hood) and
Romulus
(Captain John Sutton) blocked the entrance of Centuri, and a party of marines went ashore. The French were scattered, and four polacres destroyed in the harbour, but Nelson ordered that no inhabitants of the town were to be plundered or molested. This was a war of liberation, not conquest, and the support of the people was needed if Britain was ever to rule Corsica.

Next was Rogliano at the extremity of Cape Corse, an important town because of its ability to monitor the movement of ships around the north of the island. The French had installed a small garrison in an old castle and raised national colours, but on the morning of 8 February the
Agamemnon
and the
Tartar
anchored off the mole head and trained their broadsides upon the town. Here Nelson was united for the first time in battle with Thomas Francis Fremantle of the
Tartar
, destined to become one of his most famous captains and already displaying exceptional ability. Two days earlier the
Tartar
and the
Fox
had driven a vessel aground near Bastia, but had been prevented from taking possession by heavy fire from ashore; now Fremantle was with his commanding officer, eager to inflict another blow. Drums beat the men to their quarters and a flag of truce went ashore. Nelson urged the French commandant to declare for the monarchy, but the reply was defiant and at ten-thirty the captain personally led his boats towards the mole. Making almost no resistance, the French fled to adjacent hilltops, from which they glared banefully while Nelson secured the town and with his own hand struck the enemy colours. A liberty tree the French had planted in the middle of the town was cut down, a storehouse destroyed and eight vessels and five hundred tons of wine found at the mole set on fire. Three other ships, one of them intercepted on its way in, were removed as prizes.