Calvi by difficult approaches.  Here Nelson landed on the 18th with General Stuart; and, after reconnoitring both the beach and the town, the two officers decided that, though a very bad landing, it was the best available.  On the 19th, at 7 A.M., the troops disembarked.  That afternoon Nelson himself went ashore to stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen.  The next day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to sea, and no intercourse was had from the land with those which remained.  The “Agamemnon” did not return till the 24th.  Lord Hood was by this time in San Fiorenzo Bay, having abandoned the hope of attacking the French fleet in Golfe Jouan.  On the 27th he arrived off Calvi, and thenceforth Nelson was in daily communication with him till the place fell.

As the army in moderate, though not wholly adequate, force conducted the siege of Calvi, under a general officer of vigorous character, the part taken by Nelson and his seamen, though extremely important, and indeed essential to the ultimate success, was necessarily subordinate.  It is well to notice that his journal, and correspondence with Lord Hood, clearly recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi; for it makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood’s report had put him unfairly in the background, he was not exaggerating his actual though ill-defined position there.  That Nelson loved to dwell in thought upon his own achievements, that distinction in the eyes of his fellows was dear to him, that he craved recognition, and was at times perhaps too insistent in requiring it, is true enough; but there is no indication that he ever coveted the laurels of others, or materially misconceived his own share in particular events.  Glory, sweet as it was to him, lost its value, if unaccompanied by the consciousness of desert which stamps it as honor.  It is, therefore, not so much for personal achievement as for revelation of character that this siege has interest in his life.

Besides the defences of the town proper, Calvi was protected by a series of outworks extending across the neck of land upon which it lay.  Of these the outermost was on the left, looking from the place.  It flanked the approaches to the others, and commanded the communications with the interior.  It was, by Nelson’s estimate, about twenty-two hundred yards from the town, and had first to be reduced.  By the 3d of July thirteen long guns, besides a number of mortars and howitzers, had been dragged from the beach to the spot by the seamen, who also assisted in placing them in position, and for the most part worked them in battle, an artillerist from the army pointing.  Nelson, with Captain Hallowell, already an officer of mark and afterwards one of distinction, took alternate day’s duty at the batteries, a third captain, Serocold, having fallen early in the siege.  Fearing news might reach his wife that