A week later he wrote again, having heard that the Austrian commander-in-chief, General Wallis, had declared that the defeat was due to the failure of the British to co-operate.  Nelson thought that they had a strong hold on Wallis, and he therefore enclosed a letter to him, which he asked might be forwarded by the minister.  The experience and training of the latter, however, here interposed to prevent his sensitive uneasiness leading to a false step, and one that might involve him farther than he foresaw.  While bearing the clearest and strongest witness to the facts which Nelson had asked him to establish, he hinted to him, tactfully and with deference, that, it was scarcely becoming a public servant to justify his conduct to a foreign official, he being accountable only to his own government.  Nelson accepted the suggestion, and in so doing characterized aptly enough the temperament which then and at other times carried him farther than discretion warranted.  “My feelings ever alive, perhaps, to too nice a sense of honour, are a little cooled.”

Along with this care for the stainless record of the past, there went on in his mind a continual reasoning upon the probable course of the next year’s operations.  In his forecasts it is singular to notice how, starting from the accurate premise that it is necessary for the French to get into the plains of Italy,—­“the gold mine,”—­he is continually misled by his old prepossession in favor of landing in rear of the enemy a body of troops, supported neither by sure communication with their main army, nor by a position in itself of great strength.  The mistake, if mistake it was, illustrates aptly the errors into which a man of great genius for war, of quick insight, such as Nelson indisputably had, can fall, from want of antecedent study, of familiarity with those leading principles, deduced from the experience of the past, which are perhaps even more serviceable in warning against error than in prompting to right.  Everything assures him that the French will carry some twenty thousand men to Italy by sea.  “If they mean to carry on the war, they must penetrate into Italy.  I am convinced in my own mind, that I know their very landing-place.”  This, it appears afterwards, he believed would be between Spezia and Leghorn, in the districts of Massa and Carrara, whence also they would doubtless turn upon Leghorn, though neutral, as a valuable and fortified seaport.  “The prevention,” he continues, “requires great foresight; for, if once landed, our fleet is of no use.”

The importance of Vado Bay, so discreditably lost the year before, strikes him from this point of view, as it did also Bonaparte from his more closely coherent plan of operations.  Nelson reasoned that, if Vado were possessed by the allies, the French, in their attempt to reach the Tuscan coast, would be compelled to put to sea, where they would be exposed to the British fleet, while such an anchorage would enable the latter, when necessary, to keep the coast close