The fleet proceeded in a leisurely manner toward Carlscrona, Nelson chafing and fretting, none the less for his illness, under the indecision and dilatoriness that continued to characterize Parker’s movements.  “My dear friend,” he had written to Lady Hamilton, “we are very lazy.  We Mediterranean people are not used to it.”  “Lord St. Vincent,” he tells his brother, “will either take this late business up with a very high hand, or he will depress it; but how they will manage about Sir Hyde I cannot guess.  I am afraid much will be said about him in the public papers; but not a word shall be drawn from me, for God knows they may make him Lord Copenhagen if they please, it will not offend me.”  But now that Denmark has been quieted, he cannot understand nor tolerate the delay in going to Revel, where the appearance of the fleet would checkmate, not only Russia, but all the allied squadrons; for it would occupy an interior and commanding position between the detachments at Revel, Cronstadt, and Carlscrona, in force superior to any one of them.  “On the 19th of April,” he afterwards wrote bitterly to St. Vincent, “we had eighteen ships of the line and a fair wind.  Count Pahlen [the Russian Cabinet Minister] came and resided at Revel, evidently to endeavour to prevent any hostilities against the Russian fleet there, which was, I decidedly say, at our mercy.  Nothing, if it had been right to make the attack, could have saved one ship of them in two hours after our entering the bay; and to prevent their destruction, Sir Hyde Parker had a great latitude for asking for various things for the suspension of his orders.”  That is, Parker having the fleet at his mercy could have exacted terms, just as Nelson himself had exacted them from Denmark when Copenhagen was laid open; the advantage, indeed, was far greater, as the destruction of an organized force is a greater military evil than that of an unarmed town.  This letter was written after Nelson had been to Revel, and seen the conditions on which he based his opinion.

So far from taking this course,—­which it may be said would have conformed to instructions from his Government then on their way, and issued after knowing Paul’s death,—­Parker appeared off Carlscrona on April 20th.  Two days afterwards he received a letter from the Russian minister at Copenhagen, saying that the Emperor had ordered his fleet to abstain from all hostilities.  Parker apparently forgot that he was first a naval officer, and only incidentally a diplomatist; for, instead of exacting guarantees which would have insured the military situation remaining unchanged until definite agreements had been reached, he returned to Kioge Bay, near Copenhagen, but within the Shallows, leaving the Revel squadron untrammelled, either by force or pledge, free to go out when the ice allowed, and to join either the Swedes or its own main body.  Accordingly, it did come out a fortnight later, went to Cronstadt, and so escaped the British fleet.