along the shore, by preconcerted arrangement, to cover the advance and harass the enemy.  At 11 P.M. the ships anchored abreast the positions of the Austrians, whose lights were visible from their decks—­the sails hanging in the clewlines, ready for instant movement.  They again got under way the following day, and continued to the westward, seeing the French troops in retreat upon Savona.  The attack, Nelson said, anticipated the hour fixed for it, which was daylight; so that, although the ships had again started at 4 A.M. of the 11th, and reached betimes a point from which they commanded every foot of the road, the enemy had already passed.  “Yesterday afternoon I received, at five o’clock, a note from the Baron de Malcamp [an aid-de-camp], to tell me that the general had resolved to attack the French at daylight this morning, and on the right of Voltri.  Yet by the Austrians getting too forward in the afternoon, a slight action took place; and, in the night, the French retreated.  They were aware of their perilous situation, and passed our ships in the night.  Had the Austrians kept back, very few of the French could have escaped.”  Whether this opinion was wholly accurate may be doubted; certain it is, however, that the corps which then passed reinforced betimes the positions in the mountains, which steadfastly, yet barely, checked the Austrian attack there the following day.  Beaulieu wrote that the well-timed co-operation of the squadron had saved a number of fine troops, which must have been lost in the attack.  This was so far satisfactory; but the economizing of one’s own force was not in Nelson’s eyes any consolation for the escape of the enemy, whose number he estimated at four thousand.  “I beg you will endeavour to impress on those about the general,” he wrote to the British minister, “the necessity of punctuality in a joint operation, for its success to be complete.”

There was, however, to be no more co-operation that year on the Riviera.  For a few days Nelson remained in suspense, hoping for good news, and still very far from imagining the hail-storm of ruinous blows which a master hand, as yet unrecognized, was even then dealing to the allied cause.  On the 15th only he heard from Beaulieu, through the minister, that the Austrians had been repulsed at Montenotte; and on the 16th he wrote to Collingwood that this reverse had been inflicted by the aid of those who slipped by his ships.  On the 18th news had reached him of the affairs at Millesimo and Dego, as well as of further disasters; for on that day he wrote to the Duke of Clarence that the Austrians had taken position between Novi and Alessandria, with headquarters at Acqui.  Their loss he gave as ten thousand.  “Had the general’s concerted time and plan been attended to,” he repeats, “I again assert, none of the enemy could have escaped on the night of the 10th.  By what has followed, the disasters commenced from the retreat of those troops.”