get out, and are now ours.  Yet my diligence is not mentioned; and others, for keeping succours out of Calvi for a few summer months, are handsomely mentioned. Such things are.  I have got upon a subject near my heart, which is full when I think of the treatment I have received....  The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan’s, has cost me money.  St. Juan’s cost near L500; Corsica has cost me L300, an eye, and a cut across my back; and my money, I find, cannot be repaid me.”

As regards the justice of his complaints, it seems to the author impossible to read carefully Hood’s two reports, after the fall of Bastia and that of Calvi, and not admit, either that Nelson played a very unimportant part in the general operations connected with the reduction of Corsica, with which he became associated even before it was effectively undertaken, and so remained throughout; or else that no due recognition was accorded to him in the admiral’s despatches.  Had he not become otherwise celebrated in his after life, he would from these papers be inferred to stand, in achievement, rather below than above the level of the other captains who from time to time were present.  That this was unfair seems certain; and notably at Calvi, where, from the distance of the operations from the anchorage, and the strained relations which kept Hood and Stuart apart, he was practically the one naval man upon whose discretion and zeal success depended.  It is probable, however, that the failure to do him justice proceeded as much from awkward literary construction, phrases badly turned, as from reluctance to assign due prominence to one subordinate among several others.

How readily, yet how keenly, he derived satisfaction, even from slight tributes of recognition, is shown by the simplicity and pleasure with which he quoted to Mrs. Nelson the following words of Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, then and always a warm friend and admirer:  “I know that you, who have had such an honourable share in this acquisition, will not be indifferent at the prosperity of the Country which you have so much assisted to place under His Majesty’s government.”  “Whether these are words of course and to be forgotten,” wrote Nelson, “I know not; they are pleasant, however, for the time.”  Certainly his demands for praise, if thus measured, were not extreme.

FOOTNOTES: 

[20] The italics are the author’s.

[21] The italics are Nelson’s.

[22] Written at the siege of Calvi.

[23] Author’s italics.

[24] Golfe Jouan; on the coast of France between Toulon and Nice.

CHAPTER V.

NELSON’S SERVICES WITH THE FLEET IN THE MEDITERRANEAN UNDER ADMIRAL HOTHAM.—­PARTIAL FLEET ACTIONS OF MARCH 13 AND 14, AND JULY 13.—­NELSON ORDERED TO COMMAND A DETACHED SQUADRON CO-OPERATING WITH THE AUSTRIAN ARMY IN THE RIVIERA OF GENOA.