Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

gay with decorations, and the distinguished guests awaiting the arrival of the Sicilian sovereigns. But before the King appeared, came a messenger with an express for Nelson that a French man-of-war and three sail under convoy had anchored off Sardinia. Nelson did not hesitate. " Unfit as my ship was," he wrote, " I had nothing left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English man-of-war would do."

Thus leaving both royalties and Emma Hamilton without a further thought, Nelson, in the Agamemnon, went stretching down the coast in pursuit of his duty and the French—he was apt to find the two together. When he was

118 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

commissioning the Agamemnon at the beginning of the war, he told one of his midshipmen that the whole of his duty was to obey orders, honour the King, and "hate a Frenchman as you do the devil.' 1

And so Nelson left Naples, to return no more for five years—five years into which he crowded much of service and suffering, sieges on shore and fightings at sea. He lost an eye at Calvi, an arm at Teneriffe ; he wore out of the line at the Battle of St. Vincent and turned an indecisive engagement into a victory; he electrified the fleet with his "Patent Bridge for Boarding First-Rates;" and he won the Battle of the Nile—all this before he set his foot again in Naples.

After seeing and talking with Nelson, who in later years so signally embodied the might of England at sea to all the world, Maria Carolina was further strengthened in her hopes of Great Britain. By revolutions at home and the spreading terror abroad, she was driven more and more to look towards the Mistress of the Seas. Only by sea-power could the French be prevented from reaping the fruit of the dissensions sown with such assiduity by revolutionary agents in Naples. Maria Carolina's natural character, though despotic, was enlightened. In earlier years, before the coming of the revolutionary troubles, she had done much for learning and the arts, while

she was anxious to encourage the intellectual advancement of women. But when the students she had aided turned Jacobin, when her subjects hailed as God-sent the Revolution which had murdered her sister and her sister's husband, the Queen of Naples became almost distraught with anger. Clemency was out of court; ringleaders were executed without mercy, sometimes even being denied the final rites of their religion; Jacobins were thrown into prison and only released four years later under the pressure of outside events. Under the dictatorship of one of her ministers, the "white terror of Naples" became a word in the mouths of the people. "Death to the French" was a text for the churches.

Emma Hamilton saw all events at this time with the eyes of her "adored Queen." She was always a hot partisan, and though naturally tender-hearted could hardly bring herself to look upon the Jacobins as human beings. Four years later, a month or so before the Battle of the Nile, she wrote to Nelson with a fury which was really reflected from the Queen—

" The Jacobins have all been lately declared innocent after suffering four years imprisonment; and, I know, they all deserved to be hanged long ago; and, since Garrat has been here, and through his insolent letters to Gallo, these pretty gentlemen, that had planned the death

of their Majesties, are to be let out on society again."

The course of affairs in Europe drew the Queen still closer to Lady Hamilton in the five years which elapsed from Nelson's first visit to Naples till his return as the Hero of the Nile. Those five years saw many changes and shiftings of the European situation. The blows struck by France seemed to paralyze the Coalition, which gradually faltered and fell in pieces. Holland was forcibly wrested from the confederacy. Prussia and Sweden retired in the spring of 1795; Spain followed their example a few months later. It was not only the French armies but also mutual jealousies dissolved that watchful league against France which mutual interests had created. Europe was to pay dear for her lack of cohesion against the common enemy. Napoleon's star was rising over the Continent he was to turn into one vast battlefield—a star crimson as that of Mars. His Italian campaign visibly shook the Kingdom of Naples, while the tramp of his victorious armies was a sound of imminent doom and disruption to the Queen, who saw herself without soldiers and without a navy whereby to oppose this new Alexander "late upsprong;" with a populace, too, impregnated with revolutionary ideas, and as threatening as Vesuvius on the eve of eruption. Austria and England were her hope; but by the treaty

signed in October, 1797, at Campo Formio, she saw Austria overcome. There remained only England.

The pressure of war was heavy on England at this time. The state of affairs, the threatening dangers near at home, compelled her to withdraw her fleets from the Mediterranean. This evacuation filled the Queen of Naples with despair, for when the ships of England were hull down below the horizon on the Atlantic side of the gateway of Gibraltar, she saw herself and her kingdom abandoned to France the enemy. Nelson himself, like most of the naval officers of the period, was indignant at removing the white ensign from any sea where it had braved " the battle and the breeze." " I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes," he said, "so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms." Writing from Bastia in December, 1796, he says: " Till this time it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she