While on this cruise towards Carlscrona, Nelson became involved in a pen-and-ink controversy about Commodore Fischer, who had commanded the Danish line at the Battle of Copenhagen,—­one of two or three rare occasions which illustrate the vehemence and insolence that could be aroused in him when his vanity was touched, or when he conceived his reputation to be assailed.  Fischer, in his official report of the action, had comforted himself and his nation, as most beaten men do, by dwelling upon—­and unquestionably exaggerating—­the significance of certain incidents, either actual, or imagined by the Danes; for instance, that towards the end of the battle, Nelson’s own ship had fired only single guns, and that two British ships had struck,—­the latter being an error, and the former readily accounted for by the fact that the “Elephant” then had no enemy within easy range.  What particularly stung Nelson, however, seems to have been the assertion that the British force was superior, and that his sending a flag of truce indicated the injury done his squadron.  Some of his friends had thought, erroneously in the opinion of the author, that the flag was an unjustifiable ruse de guerre, which made him specially sensitive on this point.

His retort, addressed to his Danish friend, Lindholm, was written and sent in such heat that it is somewhat incoherent in form, and more full of abuse than of argument, besides involving him in contradictions.  That the British squadron was numerically superior in guns seems certain; it would have been even culpable, having ships enough, not to have employed them in any case, and especially when the attacking force had to come into action amid dangerous shoals, and against vessels already carefully placed and moored.  In his official report he had stated that the “Bellona” and “Russell” had grounded; “but although not in the situation assigned them, yet so placed as to be of great service.”  In the present dispute he claimed that they should be left out of the reckoning, and he was at variance with the Danish accounts as to the effect of Riou’s frigates.  But such errors, he afterwards admitted to Lindholm, may creep into any official report, and to measure credit merely by counting guns is wholly illusory; for, as he confessed, with exaggerated humility, some months later, “if any merit attaches itself to me, it was in combating the dangers of the shallows in defiance of the pilots.”

He chose, however, to consider that Fischer’s letter had thrown ridicule upon his character, and he resented it in terms as violent as he afterwards used of the French admiral, Latouche Treville, who asserted that he had retired before a superior force; as though Nelson, by any flight of imagination, could have been suspected of over-caution.  Fischer had twice shifted his broad pendant—­that is, his own position—­in the battle; therefore he was a coward.  “In his letter he states that, after he quitted the Dannebrog, she long contested