Nelson: The Essential Hero by Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford

Author:Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780151122400
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Published: 1977-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

Lord Nelson Miniature

Sir John Jervis Oil by Beechey

Lord Nelson Oil by Abbott

Victory in the Bay of Naples Drawing by Pocock

Emma Hamilton Pastel by Schmidt

The Orders on Nelson's Uniform: top Order of the Bath left Order of St Ferdinand and Merit right Turkish Order of the Crescent bottom Order of St Joachim

Nelson in his cabin on board Victory

Print by Lucy-Shcirpe

signal guns could be distinctly heard aboard the French. (As early as 1558 a British naval instruction had laid down that in fog, or if a ship was seen to be standing into danger, contact should be made by ‘ringing bells, blowing horns, beating drums and firing guns’.)

‘The devil’s children’, as Nelson wrote, ‘have the devil’s own luck.’ But it was not entirely luck. Napoleon’s alteration to the north of his original course meant that throughout the night the two fleets gradually diverged. Some hours after dawn, when the sun had burned the mist away, they were no longer within touch of one another. But once again, if the British had had frigates scouting to port and starboard of their van, they would almost certainly have found the French.

It was not to be. Napoleon could enjoy his dreams and his books, among them a copy of the Koran and an account of the voyages of Captain Cook, as well as envisage a future infinitely more grandiose than anything even Alexander the Great had contemplated. The Directory, certainly, had agreed with his stated plans. These, as has been seen, included the foundation of a French colony in Egypt, a threat in concert with Tippoo Sahib to British Indian interests, and a triumphal return to Paris prior to the great invasion of the arrogant island. ‘Turkey’, as he had said, ‘will welcome the expulsion of the Mameluke. . . .’ The Mamelukes, an elite corps which had originated as a bodyguard of Turkish slaves first formed in the days of Saladin’s successors, had long been the effective rulers of the country. They, like the Knights of St John in Malta, were a medieval anachronism. Napoleon did not think that with his superb soldiers of revolutionary France he had much to fear on their score. His dreams went much further than the establishment of a French Empire of the East. As he was to write in his journals many years later - when exile which made everything impossible seemed on the contrary to make everything possible - he had greater ambitions. Although Turkey was at the moment an ally of France, and had long entertained good relations with the French (ever since the ‘infamous alliance’ of the sixteenth century when the Ottomans were the enemies of the rest of Christian Europe), Napoleon saw her as a threat to his plans. Leaving Egypt, the Near East, and India secure and friendly behind him, he would sweep up north through Turkey, calling on the thousands of Christians in the Ottoman Empire to rise against their masters. A revived Roman Empire which looked to France as its head

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