Yet, while thus engrossed in the war, eager for personal distinction and for the military honor of his country, he apparently sees in it little object beyond a mere struggle for superiority, and has no conception of the broader and deeper issues at stake, the recognition of which intensified and sustained the resolution of the peace-loving minister, who then directed the policy of Great Britain.  Of this he himself gives the proof in a curious anecdote.  An Algerine official visiting the “Captain” off Leghorn, Nelson asked him why the Dey would not make peace with the Genoese and Neapolitans, for they would pay well for immunity, as the Americans at that period always did.  His answer was:  “If we make peace with every one, what is the Dey to do with his ships?” “What a reason for carrying on a naval war!” said Nelson, when writing the story to Jervis; “but has our minister a better one for the present?” Jervis, a traditional Whig, and opposed in Parliament to the war, probably sympathized with this view, and in any case the incident shows the close confidence existing between the two officers; but it also indicates how narrowly Nelson’s genius and unquestionable acuteness cL intellect confined themselves, at that time, to the sphere in which he was visibly acting.  In this he presents a marked contrast to Bonaparte, whose restless intelligence and impetuous imagination reached out in many directions, and surveyed from a lofty height the bearing of all things, far and near, upon the destinies of France.

FOOTNOTES: 

[35] This indicates no opinion as to the fortune of the military operations in England, a landing once effected.  It has, however, seemed to the author singular that men fail to consider that Napoleon would not have hesitated to abandon an army in England, as he did in Egypt and in Russia.  A few hours’ fog or calm, and a quick-pulling boat, would have landed himself again in France; while the loss of 150,000 men, if it came to that, would have been cheaply bought with the damage such an organized force could have done London and the dockyards, not to speak of the moral effect.

[36] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxi. p. 60.

[37] An account of this disaster, said to be that of an eye-witness, is to be found in Colburn’s United Service Journal, 1846, part i.

[38] This motto was subsequently adopted by Nelson, when arms were assigned to him as a Knight of the Bath, in May, 1797.

[39] That is, apparently, from detached service, and ordered to the main fleet.

[40] On the northwest coast of Spain, at the entrance of the Bay of Biscay, and therefore right in the track of vessels from the Channel to the Straits of Gibraltar.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EVACUATION OF ELBA.—­NIGHT COMBAT WITH TWO SPANISH FRIGATES.—­BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT.—­NELSON PROMOTED TO REAR-ADMIRAL.—­SERVICES BEFORE CADIZ.