Troubridge’s successes continued.  A week later Salerno had been taken, and the royal colors were flying at Castellamare, on the opposite side of the Bay from Naples, and distant from it only twelve miles by land.  Nelson questioned Troubridge about the return of the King, whose most evident political conviction was that the success of the royal cause was vitally connected with the safety of the royal person.  “What are your ideas of the King’s going into the Bay of Naples, without foreign troops?  If it should cause insurrection [of the royalists] in Naples which did not succeed, would it not be worse?  The King, if a rising of loyal people took place, ought to be amongst them; and that he will never consent to.”  “The King, God bless him! is a philosopher,” he had said, repeating an expression of Lady Hamilton’s, referring to the disasters which caused the headlong flight from Rome, through Naples, to Palermo; “but the great Queen feels sensibly all that has happened.”  The Queen also was extremely fearful, and Nelson intimated to St. Vincent that a request would be made for British troops to protect the sovereigns.  “Their Majesties are ready to cross the water whenever Naples is entirely cleansed.  When that happy event arrives, and not till then, a desire will be expressed for the British troops to be removed from Messina into Naples to guard the persons of their Majesties.”  That Nelson should have considered it essential to maintain in power, by any means, sovereigns devoted to Great Britain, is perfectly comprehensible.  What is difficult to understand is the esteem he continued to profess, for those whose unheroic bearing so belied the words he had written six months before:  “His Majesty is determined to conquer or die at the head of his army.”  Under other conditions and influences, none would have been more forward to express dissatisfaction and contempt.

Withal, despite the favorable outlook of affairs and the most joyous season of the year, his depression of spirits continued.  “I am far from well,” he writes on the 3d of May, “and the good news of the success of the Austrian arms in Italy does not even cheer me.”  But in the midst of the full current of success, and of his own gloom, an incident suddenly occurred which threw everything again into confusion and doubt, and roused him for the time from his apathy.  On the 12th of May a brig arrived at Palermo, with news that a French fleet of nineteen ships-of-the-line had escaped from Brest, and had been seen less than a fortnight before off Oporto, steering for the Mediterranean.

FOOTNOTES: 

[80] Palermo possessed a strategic advantage over Syracuse, in that, with westerly winds, it was to windward, especially as regards Naples; and it was also nearer the narrowest part of the passage between Sicily and Africa, the highway to the Levant and Egypt.  With easterly winds, the enemy of course could not proceed thither; and at this time there was no enemy’s force in the Mediterranean, so that westward movements had not to be apprehended.  All dangers must come from the westward.  These considerations were doubtless present to Nelson; but the author has not found any mention of them by him at this period.