Further than this, achievement could not then go.  During the summer Bonaparte held Mantua by the throat, and overthrew one after another the Austrian forces approaching to its relief.  Two French armies, under Jourdan and Moreau, penetrated to the heart of Germany; while Spain, lately the confederate of Great Britain, made an offensive and defensive alliance with France, and sent a fleet of over twenty ships-of-the-line into the Mediterranean.  Staggered by these reverses, the British ministry ordered Corsica evacuated and the Mediterranean abandoned.  Jervis was cruelly embarrassed.  A trusted subordinate of high reputation had been before Cadiz with seven ships-of-the-line, watching a French division in that port.  Summoned, in view of the threatening attitude of Spain, to reinforce the main fleet in San Fiorenzo Bay, he lost his head altogether, hurried past Gibraltar without getting supplies, and brought his ships destitute to the admiral, already pressed to maintain the vessels then with him.  Although there were thirty-five hostile ships in Toulon and the British had only twenty-two, counting this division, there was nothing to do but to send it back to Gibraltar, under urgent orders to return with all speed.  With true military insight and a correct appreciation of the forces opposed to him, Jervis saw the need of fighting the combined enemies then and there.

Unfortunately, the division commander, Admiral Mann, on reaching Gibraltar, became infected with the spirit of discouragement then prevailing in the garrison, called a council of naval captains, and upon their advice, which could in no wise lessen his own responsibility, decided to return to England.  This culpably unwarrantable act aptly illustrates the distinction, rarely appreciated, between an error of judgment and an error of conduct.  Upon arrival, he was at once deprived of his command, a step of unquestionable justice, but which could not help Jervis.  “We were all eyes, looking westward from the mountain tops,” wrote Collingwood, then a captain in the fleet, “but we looked in vain.  The Spanish fleet, nearly double our number, was cruising almost in view, and our reconnoitring frigates sometimes got among them, while we expected them hourly to be joined by the French fleet.”  “I cannot describe to your lordship,” wrote Jervis himself, “the disappointment my ambition and zeal to serve my country have suffered by this diminution of my force; for had Admiral Mann sailed from Gibraltar on the 10th of October, the day he received my orders, and fulfilled them, I have every reason to believe the Spanish fleet would have been cut to pieces.  The extreme disorder and confusion they were observed to be in, by the judicious officers who fell in with them, leave no doubt upon my mind that a fleet so trained and generally well commanded as this is would have made its way through them in every direction.”