in bringing Latouche Treville to attack his five, he would have hoped, even with such odds, for a decisive victory; but, failing that, he was assured that the Toulon fleet would be out of the game for that summer.  It was important to bring matters to an issue, for, as he wrote Elliot, his force was diminishing daily through the deterioration of ships never from the first fit for their work.  Measured by the standard of the ships in the Channel, “I have but four sail fit to keep the sea.  I absolutely keep them out by management.”  Except the four, all needed docking, and there was not a dock open to the British west of Constantinople.

But, while thus keenly anxious to force an action, he was wary to obtain tactical conditions that should insure a success, adequate both to the risk he ran, and to the object at which he aimed.  “I think their fleet will be ordered out to fight close to Toulon, that they may get their crippled ships in again, and that we must then quit the coast to repair our damages, and thus leave the coast clear; but my mind is fixed not to fight them, unless with a westerly wind, outside the Hieres, and with an easterly wind, to the westward of Sicie.”  Crippled there, to leeward of their port, the other British division coming up fresh, as a reserve, from the southward, where it lay concealed, would both cut them off, and rescue any of their own fleet that might have been overpowered.  Bickerton’s orders were to remain due south from Port Cros, one of the Hyeres, at a distance such that, with the upper canvas furled, his ships could not be seen from the islands, but could keep the main division in sight from their mastheads.  In all cases of anticipated battle, Nelson not only took his measures thus thoughtfully, but was careful to put his subordinates in possession both of his general plans, and, as far as possible, of the underlying ideas.  Thus, in a memorandum issued about this time to the captains, he says:  “As it is my determination to attack the French fleet in any place where there is a reasonable prospect of getting fairly alongside of them, I recommend that every captain will make himself, by inquiries, as fully acquainted as possible with the following places, viz., Hieres Bay, [with its three entrances], Gourjean Bay, (of which I send a chart from the latest surveys made,) Port Especia, and, in particular the northern Passage into Leghorn Roads, from which side it is only, in my opinion, possible to attack an enemy’s fleet to advantage; and with the Gulf of Ajaccio.”  To these instructions he adds some details of practical preparation for anchoring under fire, and the reasons therefor.  In the same spirit, when expecting the Brest fleet in the Mediterranean, he says:  “I am perfectly prepared how to act with either a superior or an inferior force.  My mind is firm as a rock, and my plans for every event fixed in my mind.”  No man ever was served better than Nelson by the inspiration of the moment; no man ever counted on it less.