Having, with true strategic insight, chosen the place where the blow ought to be struck for the preservation of Corsica, he pressed, with characteristic fervor, the necessity of taking risks.  He discusses details indeed; he proposes no mere adventure, real as was his personal enjoyment of danger and action.  What man can do, shall be done; but being done, still “something must be left to chance.  Our only consideration, is the honour and benefit to our Country worth the risk?  If it is (and I think so), in God’s name let us get to work, and hope for His blessing on our endeavours to liberate a people who have been our sincere friends.”  Hearing at the same time that an army officer of general rank will have the command instead of himself, he adds:  “Pray assure him there is nothing I feel greater pleasure in than hearing he is to command.  Assure him of my most sincere wishes for his speedy success, and that he shall have every support and assistance from me.”  Truly, in generosity as in ardor, Nelson was, to use the fine old phrase, “all for the service.”

The project upon Leghorn had the approval of the Viceroy and of Jervis; but the latter, while expressing perfect reliance upon “the promptitude of Commodore Nelson,” was clear that the attempt must depend upon the contimied advance of the Austrians.  This was also Nelson’s own view.  “All will be well, I am satisfied, provided Wurmser is victorious; upon this ground only have I adopted the measure.”  This qualification redeems the plan from the reproach of rashness, which otherwise might have been applied to the somewhat desperate undertaking of carrying a fortified town by such a feat of hardihood.  It loses thus the color of recklessness, and falls into place as one part of a great common action, to harass the retreat of a beaten enemy, and to insure the security of one’s own positions.

On the 15th of August, when the above words were written, Nelson was still ignorant of the Austrian defeats at Lonato and Castiglione, nearly two weeks before, and of their subsequent retreat to the Tyrol.  A rumor of the reverse had reached him through Florence, but he gave it little attention, as the French in Leghorn were not claiming a victory.  On the 19th he knew it definitely, and had to abandon the expectation, confided to his brother, that the next letter seen from him would be in the “Public Gazette.”  “An expedition is thought of, and of course I shall be there, for most of these services fall to my lot.”  “One day or other,” he had written to his wife, apparently with this very enterprise in mind, “I will have a long Gazette to myself; I feel that such an opportunity will be given me.  I cannot,” he continued with prophetic self-reliance, “if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight.”