The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2), by James Harrison

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2)

Author: James Harrison

Release Date: October 21, 2005 [EBook #16913]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NELSON, VOL. 2 ***

Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HORATIO LORD VISCOUNT NELSON:

BARON NELSON OF THE NILE, AND OF BURNHAM-THORPE AND HILBOROUGH IN THE COUNTY OF NORFOLK; KNIGHT OF THE MOST HONOURABLE MILITARY ORDER OF THE BATH; DOCTOR OF LAWS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; VICE-ADMIRAL OF THE WHITE SQUADRON OF HIS MAJESTY'S FLEET; DUKE OF BRONTE, IN FARTHER SICILY; GRAND CROSS OF THE ORDER OF ST. FERDINAND AND OF MERIT; KNIGHT OF THE IMPERIAL ORDER OF THE OTTOMAN CRESCENT; KNIGHT GRAND COMMANDER OF THE EQUESTRIAN, SECULAR, AND CAPITULAR, ORDER OF ST. JOACHIM OF WESTERBURG; AND HONORARY GRANDEE OF SPAIN.

BY MR. HARRISON.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

Lord Viscount Nelson's transcendent and heroic services will, I am persuaded, exist for ever in the recollection of my people; and, while they tend to stimulate those who come after him, they will prove a lasting source of strength, security, and glory, to my dominions.

     The King's Answer to the City of London's Address on the Battle of
     Trafalgar.

LONDON:
Printed at the Ranelagh Press,
BY STANHOPE AND TILLING;
FOR C. CHAPPLE, PALL MALL, AND SOUTHAMPTON ROW,
RUSSELL SQUARE.
1806.

THE LIFE
  OF
LORD NELSON,
DUKE OF BRONTE, &c.

In tracing the history of a hero so active as Lord Nelson, the mind can scarcely be allowed a moment's pause. His multifarious transactions, indeed, frequently arise in such rapid successions, that they become far too much involved with each other to admit of any precise chronological arrangement. Operations are commenced, which cannot always be soon brought to a conclusion: and, while these are transacting, an attention to other occurrences, of more or less magnitude, becomes perpetually requisite; which are, in their turn, subjected to similar procrastinating delays and necessarily diverted attentions.

The cares of Lord Nelson can hardly be said to have one minute ceased, even when he landed, in safety, at Palermo, the royal and illustrious characters, and their immense treasure, which he had successfully conveyed thither, amidst such alarming difficulties and dangers. His anxious bosom, it is true, was now relieved from the apprehensions which it had suffered during the storm; and felt, no doubt, as it ought, a sympathetic sense of the grateful felicitations of beloved friends, on the event of their happy arrival at a place of secure refuge. He could not, indeed, fail to rejoice in their joy: but it was, with all of them, a joy mingled with melancholy; and, with him, it was particularly so.

An intellectual tempest, at this apparently enviable period of our hero's glory, was violently agitating the secret recesses of his too susceptible heart. Justly jealous of honour, his soul ever kindled with alarm at the most remote idea of aught that could, by any possibility of implication, be considered as having the smallest tendency to sully or impair a single particle of that celestial inheritance which he felt conscious of having a legitimate right to possess in undiminished lustre, If it should be thought, by the more calmly philosophical mind, that he might sometimes too soon take the alarm; let it, at least, not fail to be remembered, that the true votary of honour must never be, even once, a single moment too late.

The reader who has attentively perused the preceding part of Lord Nelson's history, will long since have discovered, that one grand trait of character, in this exalted man, was a determined resolution of accomplishing, to it's fullest possible extent, the business, whatever it might be, which was once committed to his charge; and that, in every expedition, it formed his chief pride, to effect even more than could have been expected, by those who had, from the greatest possible confidence in his skill and ability, selected him for the enterprise. It was this invariable principle that, by prompting him to serve on shore, at the batteries before Calvi, cost him the vision of an eye; and it was to this same cause, that he owed the loss of his arm at Teneriffe. Conformably to this grand characteristic, having so honourably received the Earl of St. Vincent's orders to seek and to destroy the French armament, which he had at length gloriously encountered at the mouth of the Nile; he still internally regretted, that the wound on that occasion received in his forehead, by rendering him almost wholly blind, had proved the sole cause of a single French ship's escape. Not that this undoubted conviction in his own bosom, that he should certainly have captured or destroyed the whole fleet, conveys the smallest reflection on any other officer for not having effected the same purpose: for, most assuredly, though many captains in this noble squadron might boast of equal bravery with himself, and of much skill too, Lord Nelson greatly surpassed them all, and perhaps every other naval commander, in that promptitude of vigorously winged imagination which instantaneously rises to the exigency. The moment Captain Berry had, on first beholding the position of the French fleet at anchor, fully comprehended the entire scope of his adored admiral's design for the attack, he exclaimed, in an extacy—"If we succeed, what will the world say?"—"There is no if in the case," coolly replied the admiral: "that we shall succeed, is certain; who may live to tell the story, is a very different question!" So positive was this great man of success, even before the battle commenced.

Though Lord Nelson had hitherto failed in taking the fugitive ships from Egypt, and the transports were not yet destroyed at Alexandria; he never relinquished the idea, that some of his "band of brothers," the heroic captains of the Nile, might finally fall in with, and either take or destroy, the two line of battle ships, and two frigates, which had alone escaped, and thus complete the destruction of all the ships of war. Nor had the comprehensive mind of our hero limited it's hope to these alone: he trusted that some of his brave band would at least assist in effecting the destruction of the transports; as well as in preventing every remaining Frenchman, who had been landed in Egypt, from ever returning to France. For this purpose, he had not only left Captain Hood on the coast; but solicited, both at home, and of our allies, the requisite bomb-vessels, &c. by repeated most urgent epistles.

At length, the necessary preparations had been made, and dispatched from England, under the command of Sir William Sidney Smith,