and again pressing on the government the settlement of the American seizures, with which he was still troubled; and the clearing up of the disclosures of frauds in the island navy-yards. In these employments passed six long years. At the first threat of a quarrel with Spain about Nootka Sound, Nelson hastened to town and reiterated his claim to employment, but a cold official reply sent him back with but little hopes. No sooner did the revolutionary war break out, than his services were again pressed on the Admiralty, and again damped by an official answer. Energetic, doubtless, was his request, but the bombast of his offer to commission a cock-boat, rather than remain idle, rests on no good authority, and must be struck out from among the so-called characteristic sayings of the hero of the Nile. With the opening of the year 1793, everything seemed changed. "After clouds," he writes, "come sunshine. The Admiralty so shine upon me, that I am really as much surprised as when they frowned." It was no longer the cold official acknowledgment of his application, but a free and eager offer of a line-of-battle ship; and on the 26th of January Nelson commissioned the Agamemnon of sixty-four guns, the ship that was to lay the foundation of his fame, and to become herself famous among the famous ships of the British fleet.

CHAPTER III.

ST. VINCENT.

1793-1797.

Employed in the Mediterranean by land and sea.-Bastia.-Calvi.Ca Ira. Austrian army.-Commodore's broad pendant.-Corsican evacuation.-La Sabina.-Straits of Gibraltar.-St. Vincent.

THE Agamemnon was soon manned and ready for sea. Her first station was in the channel fleet, under Lord Hotham, but in June she was ordered to the Mediterranean, and joined Lord Hood's squadron off the south coast of France. Whilst Lord Hood was negotiating with the Royalists of Toulon, and doing his best to aid them in their ill-fated resistance to the Revolutionary government, Nelson sailed to Naples with despatches for our envoy, Sir William Hamilton, and commenced that intimacy with the Neapolitan court, and the designing wife of our envoy, that so soon after embittered his domestic life and blotted his public character. Tunis was his next destination, for the Bey was impoliticly siding with the Revolutionary government of France, and playing a deceitful game towards his old English allies. The presence of English ships, for the time of their presence, improved the tone of the Bey, but with their departure his former predilections returned, and French influence, for a time, was in the ascendant at Tunis. On his course to Tunis Nelson fell in with five French ships, three of which were frigates, one a corvette, and the fifth a brig. Though with only two-thirds of his crew at quarters, Nelson got close enough to one of the frigates to bring her to action and silence her fire; but at that moment the wind sprang up and bore her away, whilst her companions came down and joined their disabled comrade. So superior were his opponents in sailing that Nelson ex

pected, and prepared for, further action: but the state of the one frigate effectually warned the rest, and they all bore away from their solitary and weak antagonist.

The winter was now coming on, when Nelson received a separate command, consisting of several small frigates, off the coast of Corsica. The assistance of the Corsicans had been determined on by our government, and the reduction of the island intrusted to the Mediterranean fleet, and a small mixed army under General Dundas. Never was a blockade more closely pressed by a small force than that of Nelson on the coast of Corsica. Not a boat could creep in or out without capture, and at every available place a rapid debarkation of a few sailors and marines constantly kept the French in alarm, and laid low many a store-house, cut out ships, intercepted despatches, and rendered the maintenance of the island a difficult problem. St. Fiorenzo and Bastia at length were the only defensible ports in the possession of the French. The former soon fell to our arms, whilst its defenders fled to Bastia, at the sacrifice of every ship in their port, and concentrated the French forces within its strong defences.

To the siege of Bastia Nelson hastened by the middle of February 1794: at his ceaseless promptings it had been undertaken, and now by his sleepless vigour and determination was to be brought to a successful issue. Even to his naval leaders Nelson's daring, and his active energy, were novelties; to such military men as he now had to do with, they were plain impossibilities. Though commanding a fine army of nearly 2000 men, General Dundas persisted in waiting for as many more troops from Gibraltar before he attempted the siege of Bastia. With 500 men Nelson would have attempted to storm the town. Armies," said he, "go so slow, that seamen think they never mean to get forward: but, I dare say, they act on a surer principle, although we seldom fail." From the heights the general took a look at the town, and then returned to St. Fiorenzo. On this Lord Hood acted, took the entire responsibility on himself, and with a motley force of less than 1500 men, sent Nelson and Colonel Villettes on shore to commence the siege by land, whilst a good squadron kept watch and ward by sea.

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From that time slowly but surely the siege progressed, though the general lay idle at St. Fiorenzo. Foremost in the working parties and the batteries were Nelson and his brother officers. Gun after gun was dragged up almost inaccessible heights, and a fire opened on the enemy from unexpected positions. At length the place became too hot to hold, and the blockade too close to be borne. Capitulation was talked of, and strange to say no sooner had the treaty been commenced, than the once idle army appeared from St. Fiorenzo and marched in with all the pomp of war to take possession of the batteries, which the marines and sailors of the little fleet had taken. For this daring siege, a siege of nearly 4,000 troops by less than 1,500, Nelson received neither reward nor public commendation. From Lord Hood, indeed, came many a letter of private thanks, but not a word was said of Nelson in the public despatches, nor the shadow of a reward bestowed on his exertions.

A short but ineffectual chase of the French fleet with Lord Hood, occupied the next few weeks of Nelson's command, ere he went with his old Agamemnon to assist General Stuart in the reduction of Calvi. Here, as at Bastia, difficulties of the most trying nature were to be overcome, and heavy ordnance dragged to batteries constructed in out of the way places, and manned and mounted by seamen. The climate too was to be contended with, and disease soon proved more fatal than the fire of the enemy. On Nelson's weak frame every disease seems to have fastened in its turn, but, as he says, so weak was his frame, that no one form of disease could fasten on it for a permanency." But among all those trials and " faggings to death," there was the set off of a cordial co-operation of the small land forces, and the earnest and active exertions of the able General Stuart, who commanded on shore: from the 19th of June to the 10th of August, the wear and tear of the siege continued, and then Calvi fell. So severe had been the service, that of his small crew 150 were on the sick list when he sailed from Calvi, one third of whom he lost, whilst the constitutions of the remainder were ruined for ever. Nelson, too, came not off without a wound. The apparently trifling accident of a shot striking a handful of gravel into his face, for a time deprived him of his eye-sight, and eventually destroyed the sight of

his right eye for ever. Again he was neglected, but not now by his admiral. The government had Nelson's own journal of the siege before them, but still no rewards or even thanks came. "Every man," wrote Nelson to his uncle, "who had any share in the reduction, has got some place or other-I, only I-am without reward. The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan, has lost me money. St. Juan's cost near 500l.; Corsica has cost me 300l. and an eye, and a cut across my back, and my money I find cannot be repaid me. Nothing but my anxious endeavour to serve my country makes me bear up against it; but I sometimes am ready to give it up." "Never mind," said Nelson, when the gazette appeared with but a trifling notice of his acts, "I'll have a gazette of my own one day."

A short mission to Genoa opened Nelson's eyes to the jealousy between the allied powers, and the certainty of the fact that England alone was hearty in opposition to the new French rulers. He felt that England was draining herself to maintain allies that would not fight for themselves; and now that Tuscany had succumbed to the enemy, and Genoa began to vacillate, he regarded our occupation of Corsica as dangerous, because it required the presence of a strong fleet to maintain the sovereignty we had assumed, whilst the French fleet could thus parade about the Mediterranean, and defy the British admiral. Early in the year 1795, Lord Hood resigned the command to Admiral Hotham, and the French fleet, consisting of seventeen sail of the line and five frigates, fully manned with nearly 17,000 men, took heart to sail in search of the weaker force of their opponents. With fourteen English line-of-battle ships and a Neapolitan seventy-four, though only half manned, and mustering little more than 7,600 men, Hotham gathered together his fleet, and stood to meet the enemy. At last the fleets came in sight, and a day of manœuvres passed before the French attempted to bear away from their opponents. An immediate chase followed, and soon one of our frigates, the Inconstant, came within fire of the Ça Ira of eighty-four guns, who had carried away two of her masts by accident. The frigate soon found the warfare too unequal and bore away, whilst the French frigate took the Ça Ira in tow, and two other line-of-battle ships kept guard at gun-shot distance on her weather bow.