517. Nelson: The Hunt for Napoleon (Part 4)
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Fries, fresh for everyone. Nelson glanced up at the sky. In the east, black clouds were gathering. In ancient times, he thought, people would have considered that a disturbing omen. But was it bad news for him or for the French? Upon this mission depended the fate of the war, perhaps even the survival of Britain.

But he felt no fear, just a quiet, calm resolve. He nodded to his lieutenants. It was time to leave, to face his destiny. As darkness fell across the Mediterranean, they sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, east into the unknown.

So it is the 8th of May 1798 and Dominic, as the storm clouds of war gather, a brilliant metaphor there that we've never had on The Rest Is History before, Horatio Nelson is preparing to sail into the Mediterranean in search of Britain's greatest foe, Napoleon Bonaparte. And people wondering where they can find him.

masterly prose and this excellent analysis of naval warfare in the age of Napoleon. Why? It's a new book from a leading naval scholar, one Dominic Sandbrook, Nelson, hero of the seas. And Dominic, I believe it's available from all good bookshops now, right? It is, Tom. And it's aimed at readers of all ages. So younger readers, especially, I think it's fair to say. But if you're an older reader, don't feel inhibited. Pile in. Yeah.

Yeah, buy multiple copies for friends and family, I would say. Yeah, Christmas is coming. And Tom, do you know what? We're recording this on Trafalgar Day. I know. On the 21st of October. I've been aglow with patriotic fervour since I leapt out of bed. Have you? Oh, that's great news. It's the best day of the year. It is the best day of the year. It's Christmas for a historian, isn't it? Absolutely it is. Oh, not all historians. No, no. Certainly for us. If you're an academic historian, I think it's a day like any other. But for those of us who apply our trade in the public eye...

It's a great moment, isn't it? Trafalgar Day. It truly is. But we're not talking about the Battle of Trafalgar. We are talking about the campaign that culminates in another of Nelson's remarkable victories, the Battle of the Nile. But Dominic, we've got a long way before we get there, haven't we? We have, because this is the amazing story, the hunt for Bonaparte, today's episode. And actually, last time, Tom, we ended with Nelson really in the doldrums. So he had...

been incredibly brave at the Battle of Cape St Vincent. Then he had led this very reckless and foolhardy attack on Tenerife to try and snatch the Spanish treasure with his mate Thomas Trubridge.

And listeners will recall that it was a harebrained scheme. They turned up on the beach, dawn breaking, bells ringing, cannons firing at them. Nelson is shot in the elbow, rescued by his oafish stepson, Josiah, who ties a tourniquet, uses his neckerchief. Nelson carried back to the ship.

refuses to accept a chair to bring him up to the ship, so clambers up with his one arm. And Theo, who's French, didn't believe that. I mean, the thing is, if you start doubting any element of Nelson's life, then the whole story falls apart. But also, the thing with Nelson's life that makes it such an extraordinary and irresistible subject is that these sort of Hollywood touches that we can scoff at, I mean, I think by and large they genuinely did happen, didn't they? Nelson consistently behaved well.

in an almost preposterously... Heroic manner. Yeah, melodramatic and heroic manner. But he's quite depressed, isn't he? Obviously, he's lost his arm and he's suffered a defeat. Yes. And he tells St. Vincent, who is...

his great patron now. Yeah. That basically, you know, it's all up for him, that he will be a burden to my friends and useless to my country. He was going to go off to a cottage, wasn't he? No one would want a one-armed admiral. Yeah, just kind of lick his wounds and be miserable. But actually, when he arrives in Portsmouth, so he lands there on the afternoon of the 2nd of September 1797, he

For the first time, he is greeted as a public hero. Yeah, because Nelson himself had made sure that news of the Battle of Cape St Vincent placed him at the centre. So he had written letters to friends and things. I mean, not unjustifiably. No, not unjustifiably, but one of Nelson's

perhaps more irritating traits for his superiors, more amusing ones for us, is that he's an inveterate self-promoter. He's very keen that everybody in England knows that he was in the thick of the action. Hashtag Nelson. Hashtag St. Vincent. Exactly. Exactly. Hashtag victory. And when he arrives, as you say, at Portsmouth, he's a very wizened and kind of miserable looking figure because he's been very ill. He's lost his arm. He's suffered a terrible defeat at Tenerife. But

There's this little crowd there and they kind of shout three cheers for, you know. Yeah. Huzzahs. Huzzahs. All this. And he is, I think, surprised by this because he's obviously been so low. Wasn't expecting it. And it gives him a little boost. And actually, this is the first time, as you say, that he becomes a national figure. So when he arrives in Bath to be reunited with his father, Edmund, and his wife, Fanny, the newspapers in Bath, the local papers all report the stories. Yeah.

So there are lots of extracts in, for example, John Sugden's biography saying, you know, the Bath Bugle or whatever will say, oh, wonderful news. The hero of the Battle of Cape St Vincent has arrived in the town and he's going to be strolling around the spas and going to the theatre and stuff and we can all see him. And isn't that wonderful? Because actually it's all about St Vincent, isn't it? They don't really mention Tenerife. No. Even the newspapers that do say that was a bit cack-handed. Yeah. I mean, they still say, well, he was very brave. So...

He's not overly criticised for Tenerife. He is still the hero of the hour. Absolutely. Do you want to read a little bit of poetry? Would you like to read the poem from the Bath Herald? I would love to, because I'm actually very interested in the topic of Nelson as a theme for poetry. So we've already mentioned Byron, who called him Britannia's god of war. Coleridge and Southey, they were very keen. William Blake, who we'll probably come to, did an extraordinary painting of Nelson. But this is maybe not entirely up there with...

Byron and Coneridge and Blake, but it was dedicated to that intrepid Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson on his arrival from scenes of danger and glory to the arms of his family in the city. And there are a lot of capital letters in that sentence. Oh, Nelson, subject of our praise, while conscious worth shall gild thy future days, soothed with the blessings of domestic life, a reverend father and a faithful wife. Oh, dear, Tom.

The irony. Yeah, that will soon have a bitterly ironic meaning. Of course, Fanny is always a very faithful wife, isn't she? Yeah, it's a question of whether Nelson will be a faithful husband. Exactly, exactly. So he's come home. Later that autumn, he goes off to London and he's given the freedom of the city in a ceremonial sword by the Lord Mayor. He goes to St. James's Palace with the Earl of St. Vincent, formerly Sir John Jervis. And there's George III, who's in one of the intervals between being mad and talking to trees there.

gives him the silver star and crimson ribbon of a knight of the Order of the Bath. Because Dominic, George III had been quite down on Nelson, hadn't he? Because Nelson had been given responsibility for looking after his son, William. Yes. Who's become the Duke of Clarence and felt that he'd done it poorly. He had done it poorly. But now he's, George III has forgiven Nelson. That's right. Yes. Because people will remember that Nelson was looking after, he was called William Henry at the time, wasn't he? Your future William IV. Yes.

And when he's the king, when he's William IV, everybody thinks of him as jolly. Bluff. Yeah. Bluff is the word. You're legally required to use that word when describing him. But actually, as a young man, he was just an absolutely dreadful person. He was the kind of person... There's a thing that our producers were telling us about people being banned from student unions when they wear chinos and blue shirts. Isn't that public school boys who are in hockey teams who get drunk and...

harass everybody yeah this is William Henry isn't it this is absolutely William Henry and very much not Nelson yeah anyway Nelson's been made a knight of the bath and he gets to choose his own coat of arms and he absolutely goes for it doesn't he so his coat of arms has got a British sailor stamping on a Spanish flag and a lion ripping a Spanish flag apart with his teeth

Does what it says on the tin. Yeah. Would not be popular with the well-dressed king of Spain. No. They could fly it over. Welcome to Gibraltar. Yeah, exactly. That's what they should do. So...

We shouldn't underplay Nelson's disability, I suppose. No, not at all. Because, I mean, it's a really, really serious business, isn't it? He can't see out of one eye. He's lost this arm above the elbow. He can't dress himself properly in the morning. Even to do up his breeches, to fasten his coat, to put his stockings on and all this kind of thing. It's like a real effort. So it's lucky he's got a faithful wife, isn't it? To help him. Fanny is amazing for him. She's so uncomplaining and patient and stuff.

So he does have some things that are specially done for him. He has specially made shirts like you, Tom. Yeah, like me. Handmade shirts. Yeah. He has a special fork. I don't know if you have a fork like this. It's a fork that a friend makes. It's like an ancestor of the spork, kind of half fork, half knife. So you could take it camping. It's a brilliant camping fork, basically.

I mean, he finds the effort of cutting up food in public very humiliating, doesn't he? Because he's kind of chasing bits of meat around his plate and things. Yeah. For somebody who fancies himself as a bit of a kind of, you know, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great.

It's not the image, is it? No, not quite the look. No, it's not the look. But I think, I mean, more than anything, it's just unbelievably painful, isn't it? I don't entirely understand the medicine of it, but there's a strand of silk that hasn't dropped off and this is causing him immense pain and it means that the wound can't heal. Is that right? I think I've got that right. Yeah, that's exactly it. So the wound is still open at the end of his arm because this silk thread has not fallen away. Yeah.

And he goes to see a surgeon in London. The surgeon says, look, it will eventually. There's nothing we can do. But you can't go to sea really while this is the case because this could get infected. Well, also, he's necking vast quantities of laudanum, isn't he? Yeah, he is. So he's off his face on opium. He is. So his mood, though, is perfectly matched to that of the country. Britain has been fighting now for five years against revolutionary France, far longer than anybody imagined France.

France has proved a much more resilient and indeed more than resilient, a formidable opponent, revolutionary France. The British fleet, people will remember, has been forced out of the Mediterranean. Britain's allies are dropping out of the war like flies. It's proved very expensive. The French have actually landed at one point a little raiding party at Fishgarden, Wales.

There's a great story, isn't it? The local town's women lined up in their Welsh hats and the French mistook them for grenadiers or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And surrendered en masse. A great victory for the women of Wales. But news of that little invasion sparked a financial panic. So there was a huge run on the Bank of England. A lot of country banks collapsed.

And if you read Jenny Uglow's brilliant book about Britain in the Napoleonic Wars, she has all this stuff with kind of letters from country parsons and things. At this point, 1797. So we will be doing a bonus with her. Yeah. So if you're a member of the Restless History Club, we will be talking to her about that book. And that's a brilliant book about Britain in the 1790s. Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793 to 1815. Absolutely wonderful book. Anyway.

Then there are a wave of mutinies in the spring of 1797, a few months before Nelson's return. There's been a mutiny at Spithead, then there's been a mutiny at the Knorr,

And a blockade of the Thames actually by the mutineers. I mean, this for the Royal Navy is an absolute nadir, is a shocking moment that the sword and shield of Britain can be disrupted in this way. But what's amazing about this is that Nelson is very sympathetic to the spithead mutineers who he feel have been badly done by. Yeah. This is very much his kind of noblesse oblige, that those in the higher ranks owe a duty of care to those low down. And so he said of the spithead mutiny, I was amazed to read this, the

the most manly thing I ever heard of. And does the British sailor infinite honour? And that's what he says to the Duke of Clarence, who's like, hang them all. And he says, no, no, we have a duty to them. He does view the ringleaders of the Norm mutiny, though, as jacobins, who are kind of misleading the honest people

British tar and he'd be all in favour of hanging them from the yardarm which I think actually is what happens to them I think they do all get hanged don't they yes they are hanged the ringleaders are hanged I think because there's a couple of different things happening at once one is understandable anxiety and resentment at the kind of low pay the fact they've been at sea for ages the war is dragged on bad food all of that stuff

And then among some people, there was a radical sentiment and those two things have become mixed up. And that's at the law. Yeah. Anyway, for people in Britain, the news of the mutinies on top of everything else is really shocking. And then in October 1797, Britain's last major ally, Austria, signs a separate peace with France. And wouldn't you know it, not for the last time, Britain stands alone. And the

There's an amazing scene, actually, William Pitt, the prime minister, gets up in the Commons. And of course, Pitt is largely forgotten today, but it's a very Churchillian moment. He says, better to face danger accompanied with honour. That's not how he speaks. He says, danger accompanied with honour, because he's about 10. You've got to do it in Churchill's voice, otherwise it doesn't work. And to accept indelible shame and disgrace. Indelible shame and disgrace. And listeners can decide who's more accurate there.

Well, I mean, he's a very impressive man, William Pitt, so I don't think he sounded like Tom's version. Tom's version is from Blackadder, let's be honest. Anyway, Pitt says, we need to fight on. We can't surrender everything that constitutes the pride, the safety and happiness of England. And he says, all freeborn Britons must join hand and heart in a solemn pledge to fight for the laws, liberties and religion of our country. This is very stirring stuff, but actually this

This is the pretext for him to massively increase taxes. Yeah, so it's kind of Rachel Reeves' fiscal black hole, isn't it? Exactly. He trebles taxes and announces the first income tax. So if you're a high earner, you will pay a tenth of your income over £200. And also notoriously, he triples the window tax, doesn't he? He does indeed. So all the bricked up windows that you sometimes see are from this moment. Tax evasion. Exactly.

So morale is pretty low, I think it's fair to say. And Nelson at this point gets a letter. He gets an invitation to go to a parade to bolster morale. The king wants to celebrate the three great victories they've had at sea. So that's Capes and Vincent and Nelson was involved against the Spanish.

They won a tremendous victory at Camperdown against the Dutch. And that's amazing, isn't it? Because that's for only a few weeks after the mutinies. Yes. I think it's Admiral Duncan, as in the gay pub in Soho. I think that's right, yes. Shall I tell you what NAM Roger said of that? I'd love to hear it. Of Camperdown. It bestowed for the first time on the Royal Navy something of the aura of invincibility which now hung about the French armies on land. I mean, he'd know about that. Yeah.

This presumably is why they're having this parade. That's right. Because essentially it's the only good news story they have. Well, they have won three Titanic naval battles. Yeah. The third one was called a battle with a brilliant name of the glorious first of June. Because it's fought in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic. And that was against the French a year earlier. So they've had three victories against the Spanish, the Dutch and the French.

And previously, Victress had not been greeted by parades because they were seen as kind of populist, vulgar, the kind of thing people do actually in revolutionary France, Jacobin behavior. But the government feels they really need this parade. So they have it on the 19th of December. It's freezing cold, but tens of thousands of people turn out. Nelson wears his order of the bath, and he's in charge of handing the Spanish flags to the dean of St. Paul's Cathedral.

which is a kind of tribute to his newfound celebrity, but also, as John Sugden says in his biography,

This is a moment kind of shadowed with irony because it's on this very spot in just eight years' time that his own body will rest in the most famous state funeral in British history. And this is why his story has such a quality of epic. I mean, it's full of these kind of ironies and foreshadowings and echoes. It's amazing. Exactly. So the weeks after this great parade are quite bleak. Everybody is very anxious about the taxes and about...

the fact that Britain is now isolated in Europe. And there's a real sense, I think, about Britain gearing up almost reluctantly for this kind of total struggle. It is clearly now a different kind of war from even the Seven Years' War, I think. It is a much more financially demanding and kind of emotionally demanding war, a genuinely national campaign. And it's about this point that some of William Pitt's spies start to bring

whispers that on the other side of the channel, the French are massing troops and preparing ships. And they eventually discover that as the supreme commander of this new army, the Directory, who are running France, have appointed the man who had carried all before him in Italy. And this, of course, is the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte.

And what nobody knows is, are they planning an attack on the dockyards across the Channel? Chatham, Tom. Chatham and Portsmouth. Because we discussed this before, didn't we, that that would be the only way, really, that France could knock Britain out of the war, would be to destroy the dockyards. Yeah. If you destroy the dockyards and win control of the Channel, you could then land troops. You don't necessarily need to. You know, if you can control the Channel, starve Britain out, starve Britain of supplies. They'd be reduced to terms. Yeah, then Britain would have no choice but to come to terms.

So no one really knows what their plan is.

But by the early spring, there were more rumours reaching London and spy reports and things. Then the south of France, in Toulon, which of course had been retaken by Napoleon. You'll remember that forensically researched scene of Napoleon looking out across the smoking harbour of Toulon. A cruel smile, I think, was playing on his lips, wasn't it, Tom? But presumably because he had scabies, which he'd got from picking up the glove, wasn't it? That's well remembered. In the course of that siege. Yeah.

Yeah, he's like a Bond villain. He's not just cruel and despotic, but he's physically malformed with scabies. Right. So from Toulon, there are reports that this guy, Admiral François-Paul Bruez, is assembling a fleet with more than a dozen warships and hundreds of transports. And the question which people in London are debating for week after week is,

Where is the armament, as they call it? Where is it heading? So there are rumors that they're going to Greece, that Bonaparte has his eye set on Naples or Sicily, Constantinople, maybe even Egypt, but nobody knows for certain. And eventually the Admiralty decides, right, we will send a new squadron back to the Mediterranean to find out what on earth is going on with this enormous force being assembled in Toulon.

but also because we want to fly the flag to try and persuade the Austrians somehow to get back into the war. But it's a gamble, isn't it? Of course. Because the ships that will go into the Mediterranean have to come from St. Vincent's fleet, which are busy blocking Cadiz and patrolling the Atlantic seaboard of Iberia. That's right. So his fleet in turn has to be reinforced by ships from the Channel. So essentially, for as long as the British fleet is

is in the Mediterranean, the Channel fleet will have no strategic reserve. So it is a gamble. Yeah, but you can't just allow this enormous fleet to rampage around unchecked. Well, that's because you are Nelson and I am Hoffman. It's about the nervous twitchy. You would have done nothing, Tom. You'd have hunkered down. I would. Oh, no. You'd have lost the Napoleonic Wars. What a terrible confession. I would. I absolutely would.

But you with your dash. Had you been there, Douglas, you'd have been given the command, but instead it goes to Nelson. That's right. Yeah, sadly it goes to Nelson. He is given the Vanguard, excellent name for a ship, the 74-gun Vanguard, and he is told, we want you to go into the Mediterranean and find this colossal enemy fleet and basically report on what's going on. And he's given that command, isn't he? Partly, obviously, because he's the man of the hour. There's a sense that he's full of dash and initiative.

But also, I think, because there's a feeling that he's good at geopolitics as well. Yeah. Because presumably that British have no ports, no bases. Exactly. In the Mediterranean. And so he'll need to find some of those and that will require negotiation and diplomacy. He will indeed. And supplies and water and all of this kind of stuff that they will need. You know, you need somebody who's really on top of this, which he absolutely is. On top of the paperwork side of things, I suppose. So he says farewell to Fanny.

And actually at this point, everybody says Horatio and Fanny are very close. They have never seemed closer. They bought a new house together, Roundwood near Ipswich. And the indications are they're looking forward to making it their own. And there's a lovely story that one evening he has dinner with the first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Spencer and Lady Spencer, this guy's wife.

And Lady Spencer remembered afterwards that the talk turned to how Nelson was going away and he'd be leaving Fanny behind. And he suddenly speaks very emotionally and he says, Fanny is so lovely and she's so kind and she's so accomplished that I regard myself as the luckiest man in England. Huh?

Her angelic tenderness to me, he says, has been beyond imagination. She's dressed my wounds. She's cut up my meat. She's helped me get dressed. She's done all these things. And I really think, he says, that she's saved my life because I was so depressed and she's helped me out of it. And he says to Lady Spencer, if anything happens to me while I'm away,

I hope you'll always look after Fanny. Well, something does happen to him while he's away. Yes. But it doesn't involve a cannonball. Nothing good, I think it's fair to say, Tom. Nothing good. You know my views of this business. Well, we will discuss this. Right. So he set sail from Portsmouth on the Vanguard at the beginning of April. And for weeks, he sailed south. At the end of the month, he reaches, you mentioned Cadiz, that

That's where Sir John Jervis, now the Earl of St. Vincent, is blockading the Spanish fleet. There's an awful lot of blockading in the Napoleonic Wars, which is unbelievably boring to talk about. Ah!

Is it? I think it is. I think it's quite interesting because I think the supplying of it is so interesting. Nothing happens. No, but the fact these ships can stay out for month after month after month and be supplied. I mean, I find it amazing. But that's because I have an intense interest in the logistics of the Royal Navy. Of course. And that may be a point of difference between us. Of course. I like close action, Tom. I'm itching to get into close action. You like, like Admiral Hutham, actually. He would enjoy a blockade. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, let's not go anywhere near a cannon. Right. Exactly. So members of the Restless History Club, you can look forward to Tom doing loads of bonus episodes about a day-by-day account of a blockade of cadiz that ends with no fighting whatsoever. Anyway, he meets up with St. Vincent. St. Vincent says, look, we've had no news of the French. We've had no sign of them. We don't really have any sense of what's going on. And he says to him, I will give you two ships.

the Orion and the Alexander, and I'll give you three smaller frigates. And Dominic, is there a recently published book?

that describes this scene. Do you want to read it or shall I read it? Shall I read it? You read it. I'm going to read it. Read it with the dignity and the respect that I think this prose deserves. I will. I will. So this is, we're moving up here to the end of part one and I can think of no better way than to read something from Dominic's new book on Nelson. St. Vincent met his friend's eye and his face was grave. Nelson must remember, he said, that once he sailed east of Gibraltar, he would pass beyond help.

Most of the Mediterranean ports were loyal to France now. If he needed supplies or repairs, the only reliable harbour was at Naples. And thanks to Bonaparte, Naples' independence hung by a thread. A thread! Nelson nodded. He knew the risks, but he also knew the stakes. Upon this mission depended the fate of the war, perhaps even the survival of Britain.

But he felt no fear, just a quiet, calm resolve. And so, Dominic, on the 8th of May, 1798, he sets off through the Straits of Gibraltar, east into the unknown. What tension. What an incredible tension. Let's take a break because I can hardly breathe. Want to shop Walmart Black Friday deals first? Walmart Plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one-year annual membership.

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So Dominic, we left our listeners on a moment of excruciating tension. Everything is literally hanging on a thread. Yeah, everything. So Nelson sailed east into the Mediterranean searching for this vast French fleet known as the Arbement. There is a massive burden on him, isn't there? Because as we've said, the ships that he's taking into the Mediterranean essentially is the naval reserve that would help Britain to block a French crossing of the Channel. Yeah, that's right. He can't afford to lose it. No, he can't.

He does have something in his favor, which is the two ships that St. Vincent has given him are really excellent ships. I mean, Nelson's delighted. They're the Alexander and the Orion. And these two captains are tremendous people. So the captain of the Alexander is a guy called Alexander Ball. And he's from Gloucestershire. He's a squire's son from Gloucestershire. He's a great reader. And

And I'm delighted to report that he was inspired to go to sea by reading Robinson Crusoe. Well, Dominic, could I just intervene at this point? I know that Daisy Christodoulou, wonderful educationalist who came on and did the history of exams for us. Yes. She, I'm afraid, argues that Robinson Crusoe is wholly irrelevant and hasn't had any impact on history at all. I know she's a listener and I hope that when she hears this, she will go away and reflect on her error. Yeah, because...

Because the entire career of Alexander Ball, an important player at the Battle of the Nile, probably somebody who, had he not read Robinson Crusoe, Tom, you and I might be speaking French. Imagine. Yes. And Daisy would be doing her educationalist stuff in French. So she should reflect on that. And also just to say, I mean, Nelson does really come to admire Alexander Ball, doesn't he? But I'm afraid to say...

that at one point Alexander Ball had disgraced himself by wearing epaulettes in the French style. Oh no! And Nelson didn't approve of this and thought him a great coxcomb. Oh no, that's terrible. Yeah, but it all ends well. They end up great pals, don't they? Yeah, which actually is not the case with the other man. The other man is also a brilliant captain. He's called James Sommeray.

And he's from Guernsey. I mean, these are funny characters, all of these captains, because this guy, Summeray, is very sensitive and serious and is always sinking into black dogs kind of depressions. And he and Nelson have a slightly more tense relationship, I think it's fair to say. But Nelson knows that he's a brilliant captain. And that's what really matters. And that is what matters, exactly. Can he serve Britain? Yes. Then he's good. And their crews love them. The three ships that he's got are as good as you could find anywhere in the world. Anyway...

It's almost over before it begins this mission because just outside Toulon, they run into this massive storm. Nelson is a bit careless and heedless going into the storm because he's thinking only of the kind of political situation. So the vanguard loses four of its masts and four sailors are swept overboard. And Nelson is very shaken by this. He writes to Fanny and he says, you know, I had thought myself one of the most fortunate men to command such a squadron in such a place. My pride was too great.

But the accidents which have happened to the vanguard were a just punishment for my vanity. I hope it has made me a better officer as I believe it has made me a better man. And actually, I thought this would be a nice moment to stop and reflect on Nelson's character a bit. Because if you'd spoken to people in the Admiralty, you could have heard very disobliging reports of Nelson. People might have said, he's actually very vain. He's extremely annoying.

You know, he's difficult, he's prickly, he's a bit of a nightmare. But I think what redeems him is precisely this quality that is expressed in the letter to Fanny. He is reflective about his own faults.

He genuinely is incredibly hardworking and he's self-improving and he's dedicated and resilient and all of these kinds of things. I mean, I think the thing about losing the mast, it's often said that Nelson, you know, his seamanship was incomparable. I don't think that's quite true. It's not really his qualities of seamanship that make him the extraordinary naval commander that he is. And he is capable of errors like that.

I think also the other thing, it's something that Patrick O'Brien famously alludes to when Jack Aubrey talks about meeting Nelson. And there's this kind of passage about, you know, he doesn't need a great coat in the cold because he's aflame with zeal for king and country.

And Aubrey says, coming from anyone else, this would have sounded ludicrous, melodramatic, overwrought. But coming from him, you felt, yeah, that's great. And there's something about that, the letter to Fanny, isn't there? I hope it has made me a better officer, as I believe it has made me a better man. Had he not been intensely, burningly serious when he wrote that, it would have just seemed ludicrous. I think that's the thing, isn't it? Nelson is an extremely earnest man.

I wouldn't credit him with too much of a sense of humor. No. He's not funny and he's certainly not self-deprecating. And I don't think he would be a man who would enjoy jokes about the Royal Navy. He's so committed. He has this kind of moral earnestness. And actually, if you think about our podcast that we did about the French Revolution, you know, moral earnestness. It's the character of the age, isn't it? It's absolutely a character of the age. I suppose it's the early age of romanticism, isn't it? And it's kind of part of that vibe. But I think he takes cliché.

and cranks it up to such a pitch that the cliche becomes kind of Homeric. Yes. Storm clouds of war hanging by a thread. And people thrill to it. People who would laugh if it came from anyone else find it utterly inspiring. But that's why I think the character that he most resembles in British history is Churchill. Churchill is exactly the same. I'm a great man, all that kind of rubbish. And then when Churchill says in the Second World War,

What's he say to the Tory MPs or something? If this island story of ours to end here, let it end when we're all choking in our own blood on the ground. I mean, if somebody says that in real life, if Theo said that about the rest is history, we'd just laugh. Keir Starmer. Yes. Keir Starmer would never say that in a million years.

But I think there's a... What's the histrionic quality that is elevated to the operatic, you might say? Exactly. The operatic quality of Nelson, I think, is exactly right. I'm amazed. Have there not been operas about Nelson? There must have been. There should be. I mean, there's quite a lot of music, as we may see in the second part of our series. Yes. But not an opera, I think. So anyway, they have not been wrecked. So they continue and they approach Toulon.

It is clear the French are long gone from Toulon. So now, basically, they're looking for a needle in a haystack. They are. I mean, the huge expanse of the Mediterranean to find this fleet is going to be really tough. They then spot a sort of sail. It's a brig, and it's come from St. Vincent. He has sent, of all people, Hardy, Thomas Masterman Hardy, who's now a commodore. And Hardy says, we've heard intelligence. We have news. This enormous fleet has been spotted heading towards Italy. At least a dozen ships of the line, hundreds of transports.

The orders have changed. We want you to intercept this fleet and we will be sending reinforcements for you to do this. So your old mate Thomas Trubridge of Tenerife fame is on his way. Hates the French. He does hate the French with a passion with 11 more ships and you know,

Go for it now. This is a campaign of annihilation. And so he's told that he's being sent the elite of the Navy of England. But there is one big drawback, which is that there's a lack of cruisers, an order of ship that had begun to be constructed the previous year and are designed for speed. And obviously they would be ideal if you're looking for a fleet.

And St. Vincent actually sends Nelson nine of these cruisers, but for kind of concatenation of reasons, only one reaches him. And so this will be a real problem for Nelson over the next few weeks because he just lacks the resources necessary to find an expedition. Yeah.

So he now has 14 fighting ships and they are, as you said, Tom, they're the elite of the Royal Navy. And he's also got supplies for three months. So bread and oranges and beef and all that stuff. Literal bullocks. Literal bullocks. We have Truebridge in the Culloden. We have Henry d'Estaing Darby in the Bellerophon. Thomas Foley in Goliath.

These are the cream of the crop of the Royal Navy. These are people at Nelson's level, really, you know, brilliant commanders in extremely well-disciplined, well-trained ships. So like the cream of the English peerage at the Battle of Agincourt, Dominic? Well, that's the comparison, isn't it? That is the comparison, because we talked in the very first episode about how Nelson clearly must have loved Shakespeare at school because he's got this absolute fixation on Henry V.

and on the idea of the Band of Brothers. And this now, the reason we've mentioned all these people, is that this is the Band of Brothers. He has this romantic yearning, I guess, that these are like, you know, Alexander the Great's companions or Henry V's paladins before Agincourt. These are the people who will stand together in the darkest hour, you know, shoulder to shoulder, all of this kind of thing, which Nelson absolutely believes in. And it is said of Nelson that there was never an admiral who,

was more open to being approached by his fellow captains. Yeah, because his way of working is he will have them over, won't he, for dinner and stuff. A touch of Nelson. Exactly, the Nelson touch. Over there, kind of spotted dog and kind of steak pudding or whatever. They will talk on and on about the tactics and the plan. He's very open and very generous, which is unusual. I mean, obviously there is a hierarchy and they do defer to him.

But by the standards of the time, he's much less strict. He wants to hear what they've got to say. And obviously they have a lot to discuss because they don't know where this armament is heading and they've got to try and work it out, haven't they? Exactly. So here are the options. It could well be heading for southern Italy to basically snuff out the kingdom of Naples. It could head to Greece. Greece is part of the Ottoman Empire.

But a lot of the Ottoman Empire feels like it's ripe for the plucking. So it could be going to Greece. There's talk of Constantinople. There is also talk of going further east, going southeast towards Egypt. You mentioned Egypt earlier. There are some rumors that the French have been lining up scholars and scientists, and they've got some crazy operation in mind. Very far-fetched, though, isn't it? Very far-fetched. Go all the way to Egypt? I mean, very unorthodox.

I mean, there are even rumours that the French have dispatched agents to India and that there is something brewing, perhaps an attack on the East India Company. I mean, it's a dream mad in the way that Alexander the Great's dreams were mad. I mean, just wholly implausible. Exactly, Tom. Exactly. So everybody back home in Britain is following this. I mean, they're following us weeks behind at one remove.

So they're reading the newspapers and there is a sort of an immense nervousness, you know, Fanny pouring over the papers for reports of her husband, the people at the Admiralty waiting all the time. Where is this armament heading? One of them writes, an Admiralty official writes, on the success or destruction of Bonaparte's fleet, an event of great moment, not to us alone, but to all Europe may depend. Amazing. But you know, they...

They can't find it. It seems to have vanished into the air. And John Sugden, in his incomparable biography of Nelson, sums it up gloriously. So he writes, mysteriously, no one had heard a reliable word about the French. They seemed to be phantasms, capable of materialising and dematerialising at their pleasure. It's like something out of science fiction. It is. A kind of alien fleet.

with invisibility shields or something. That's exactly what it is, because the Mediterranean is a million square miles of sea.

And wherever they go, they hear rumors, but nothing certain. They go to Naples and Troubridge goes ashore to consult with the British envoy in Naples, Sir William Hamilton. He's there for two hours and then he comes back to the ship and he says, Hamilton is sure of it. They're heading for Sicily. They sail south through the Straits of Messina, past Etna, smoking on the horizon. They spot another brig and the captain of this brig says,

I've heard reports of French flags flying over Malta. But, so they've taken Malta. And that's crucial, isn't it? Because Malta is the pivot between the east and the western half of the Mediterranean. So whoever controls Malta essentially controls the hinge on which sea routes through the Mediterranean operate. Slightly mixing my metaphors there, I think. But you know what I mean. No, I think it's a powerful description, Tom. Thank you, Dominic.

So Bonaparte has moved on. He's gone past Malta, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt. Why would he make for Egypt? I mean, this is the question that must be in Nelson's mind. Egypt is technically a province of the Ottoman Empire, but in practice it has been run for centuries by the Mamelukes. So they're the descendants of the Turkic slave soldiers of the Ottomans. On paper, the Mamelukes are neutral.

But if Bonaparte could get Egypt, that basically gives him the whole of the southeastern Mediterranean. And it also means it gives him ports on the Red Sea from which the French could strike east to hoover up the British trade with India. So maybe that stuff, those reports about French agents out there in the east moving around

Through the bazaars. Their mastery of tongues. Exactly. Mastery of disguise. Maybe there's something in it. It's very Green Mantle. It's very John Buck and all this, isn't it? So Nelson has this crucial conference. He invites the four captains to whom he's closest. That is Troubridge, Ball, Summeray, and Derby aboard the Vanguard. And he says, right.

We have three possible courses of action here. We could attack Malta, turf out the French garrison and try to retake Malta. But that means the armament is sailing around and we don't know what it's doing. We could head back towards Sicily and Naples.

In case this is all a ruse and that's what the French have in mind, or we could turn south towards Egypt. And he says to the other captains, and I quote, should the armament be gone to Alexandria and get safe there? Our possessions in India are probably lost. Do you think we had better push for that place? And then he hands out, it's very kind of dramatic moment. Brilliant. Four pieces of paper. And he says, each of you write your answer on this piece of paper. And one by one, they write the same word.

Alexandria. It's a brilliant moment. So off to Alexandria they head and the wind is behind them and they make tremendous speed and they don't know it, but as they're heading, they pass perilously close to the French armament. I mean, unbelievably close. Maybe a couple further miles south and they would have seen it. But anyway, on they go. And a week later on the 29th of June,

They sail into Alexandria, one of the most romantic historic cities on the whole of the Mediterranean. I mean, imagine that, you know, they are in the great drama of the age themselves, but they're against a backdrop that is, that couldn't be bettered. Well, we've already mentioned Alexander, haven't we? I mean, this is founded by Alexander the Great. It's where Antony Cleopatra hung out. It's,

Great cities of Christianity and Islam. Incredible. Somebody who conceives of himself as an operatic figure, as the hero of a great melodrama. What a moment. But to be a hero of a great melodrama, you don't want to look like an idiot. And Nelson looks like an idiot because there's no sign of the French. They've called it wrong. They arrive and there's nothing. He sends Hardy ashore to talk to the locals and Hardy comes back and he says,

Nothing. No sign of the French. There's been no reports of the French. I mean, what a devastating moment for Nelson. Crushing. Because time is of the essence. He doesn't have that many supplies. And getting supplies in what is a French lake is so difficult.

And he knows that every day lost is a day that the French could be, you know, laying siege to Constantinople, laying siege to Naples. Who knows? He has made a terrible mistake and they are probably heading to either Constantinople or Naples and he must hurry. So the very next day, the 30th, he says, we're not waiting any more time in Alexandria. We have to get out and get on with the hunt. And they make sail. And unbelievably...

One day and one hour later, Bonaparte sails into Alexandria. And this, of course, is one of the pivotal moments in world history. It's a moment where you could say the age of

European imperialism really begins. This is where the 19th century, perhaps in global terms, starts. And we have already done an episode on it, haven't we? We did an episode on Napoleon in Egypt. And it's an incredible story. So for Napoleon, attacking Egypt is an attack on Britain. So he describes that expedition as being the left wing of the army of

of England, to destroy England thoroughly, we must seize Egypt because then they can throttle Britain's trade with India and maybe win India. That's the way Napoleon thinks to get at Britain. But it's also much more than that. The fantasy of being a new Alexander is playing in Napoleon's mind. In his cabin, he has a huge library full of books, you know, the books of Greek and Roman history that he had so loved as a boy.

He's reading them through to inspire him. He literally sees himself as the new Alexander the Great. So I saw myself marching to Asia, mounted on an elephant, a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs. So we talked about Nelson being histrionic and operatic. I mean, Napoleon is of a different order. But there is also the fact that this is an expedition that will open the eyes of Europe to the reality of

Egypt. Egypt as an Islamic country that can be studied in the way that savants might study plants or wildlife or whatever. But also, of course, the great center of pharaonic history.

This is why Napoleon is taking Savants with him. It's an expedition, not just of imperial conquest, but of the Enlightenment laying claim to the study of the world. And so, you know, you might well say that that's also an imperial project. So he takes teams of Savants with him, philosophers. He takes a printing press that he'd nicked from the Vatican, which can print in Latin, in Arabic and Syriac.

and he even takes a hot air balloon. I mean, it is an extraordinary story. And if you have any interest in it and haven't heard the episode that we did when about three years ago, I think something like that, do listen to that. I slightly perhaps underplayed the military dimensions of this. I mean, so he's brought 40,000 soldiers. He's got 20,000 sailors. This is an enormous amphibious expedition. And very successful because it takes him three weeks and three weeks after landing.

He smashes the Mameluke army at the Battle of the Pyramids. Yes. Soldiers. What is it? Something 4,000 years of history gazed down upon you. Exactly. I mean, he too, of course, Napoleon too, regards himself as an operatic figure. And I mean, that's the joy of this story, actually. I can't think of many moments in history that really match it, where everybody is conscious of that. They're playing a part on the greatest stage of all.

And on the 24th of July, he marches into Cairo. He is now the master of Egypt. So Napoleon, it seems, has won. Now, meanwhile, Nelson has been sailing east, still searching for this fleet. He cruised along the coast of Turkey, and then he turned back east towards Sicily. At this point, he's running out of supplies, fruit and water. They head back towards Sicily. They stop at Syracuse. Here, they get new intelligence from Naples.

The French have not passed Naples. They have not gone through into the Western Mediterranean. They have not landed in Italy. They've definitely gone east. Again, it's probably about this point that Nelson has his captains for dinner and he says, you know, time is running out, but I think we've clearly narrowed down. They must be somewhere out there in the east. And when we find them, this is what we will do.

It's not Admiral Hotham. It's not a blockade. Well, we attack them. We go straight at them. Amazing. And wipe them off the face of the sea. And this is unusual at the time, right? We talked in previous episodes. Becoming less unusual, I think. Yes. Nelson is drawing on Captain Locker and Admiral Hood and all of these people who have been his great patrons. St. Vincent had done it. St. Vincent had done it. But he says, look, this is what we're doing.

It is all or nothing. We risk everything. We just go for it. An aggressive strategy. And the aim is a battle of annihilation, isn't it? If they can wipe out the French fleet, then Napoleon's military victory on land will count for nothing. Exactly. They'll be stranded there. So a strategy in which we have an overall plan

But within that, you have a degree of discretion and to use your initiative. I mean, he trusts his captains. His captains are delighted. And after four days, they set off again. They are drilling now with their guns all the time. But of course, they still don't know where he is, where Napoleon is. No, itching for battle. There is a real sense of mounting tension now because time is so short. They get letters from London and Elton opens one of them and a diplomat says to him, the eyes of all Europe are upon you. You know, you've got to do this now. They return to Greece.

They reach a place called Koroni at the very bottom tip of the Peloponnese. And Troubridge goes ashore to find information. And he comes back within hours and he's bursting with news. He says, the Ottoman governor says he has had definite confirmation. They are in Alexandria after all. So again, Nelson turns south and he spreads his sails to catch the wind. He can't sleep. He's pacing the quarterdeck.

And they rush and they rush. At 10 a.m. on the 1st of August, the lookout on the Alexander spies in the horizon the kind of telltale gray blur of land. And within an hour or so, news comes to Nelson. There are French tricolor flags flying over Alexandria. There are French transports in the harbor, empty. The French army has landed and has moved on.

Egypt has fallen. And one of Nelson's captains said later that at that moment they felt, quote, utterly hopeless and out of spirits. They've been pursuing the French for hundreds of miles. They've pushed their ships and their men to the limit and they have failed. The French have got the foothold in Egypt they wanted. And of course, there's the risk, isn't there, that the fleet will have gone somewhere safer. Exactly. That's the one crucial

crumb of consolation the one possibility of redemption the one flickering of hope the last flicker of hope exactly is if they can find that French fleet just maybe their French admiral may have taken the fleet down the coast and parked it in a harbour closer to Cairo if they can get it and

and destroy it then everything Bonaparte will have done will be for nothing because the French army will be stranded and cut off from supplies and his conquests will just be you know ephemeral and Dominic just to say that the French high command in the navy had wanted to withdraw they'd wanted to withdraw to the Ionian islands but Napoleon has said no yeah and it's well we'll find out in the next episode whether it's a fateful mistake or not so Nelson says to the captains of the Zealous and the Goliath just quickly head east along the coast it won't take long

We know from our charts, there's a deep harbor, Abu Qiyabay, which is quite close to the mouth of the Nile. Just have a look. Along the coast they go east. And at two o'clock that afternoon, they approach the delta of the Nile. And at 2.30, a midshipman, 16 years old, George Eliot. Not the novelist, obviously. It's in the, not the novelist. Is on the highest yards of the Goliath with a telescope to his eye.

And then he sees something in the distance. It's like the scene from Master and Commander. Thirteen ships of the line, four frigates, five brigs and bomb vessels, their French flags fluttering in the breeze. Tom, they have found them. What a cliffhanger. And in the final episode of this season, we will tell the story of what happens next.

the Battle of the Nile. And if you just can't wait, then you can head to therestlesshistory.com to join the club. Obviously, if you're already a subscriber, like Nelson, go straight in. Don't delay. England expects. Goodbye.

Now, Tom, we have something unbelievably exciting to share with our listeners, don't we? Absolutely, we do, Dominic. It's that time of year again when you've got to find that perfect gift for the loved one in your life. And we are thrilled to help you with that challenge. We are announcing the launch of the Rest Is History merchandise. Yes, you can now own a piece of history. Literally, we've literally got

got shirts mugs phone cases notebooks so much

Just in time for Christmas. Unbelievable scenes, Tom, because these aren't just any shirts and mugs. Tom, these are exclusive Rest Is History designs, and they have been designed specifically to outdo the Rory and Alistair T-shirts that our friends on the Rest Is Politics team have been flogging on their tour of England that they've done. That's right, Dominic. History will always trump politics.

And our new merch truly is the perfect gift for any history fan, whether they're a friend of the show or, dare we say, someone who's not yet a friend of the show. Yeah, I mean, this is an unbelievably cunning wheeze, isn't it? It really is. Because if you're a loyal friend of the show, you can wear a T-shirt that proudly declares your allegiance.

And if you still need convincing, you know who you are, then you can buy a not-a-friend-of-the-show version as well. So you can make your point with a T-shirt or a hoodie. It is the perfect icebreaker at...

Parties. What's this, you say? You don't know the rest is history? Well, let me tell you, and you will have the perfect shirt while you talk to people about General Gordon or pigeons or the Kaiser or whatever it might be. So the possibilities are endless. And Dominic, there's lots more. There are sacral mugs, so that's brilliant. And maybe you're an Athelstan. You are catered for as well. Lots of Athelstan stuff. So truly, it's beyond a dream gift, isn't it? People.

People, Tom, have never had it so good. And in fact, if you're a club member, there is a special discount code that will come in the newsletter for members. And if you order before the 1st of December, then you'll get this amazing discount and everything will be brilliant. So basically, this is going to be the best Christmas ever. So what you need to do is head over to www.goalhanger.shop.

Grab your Restless History gear and make sure you order before the 1st of December if you're a club member to get that discount. Yeah, if you want to outdo your friends, especially people who listen to other Goldhanger podcasts like the Restless Politics, this is absolutely the way to do it. So remember to head to www.goldhanger.shop.uk

to get your merch. And remember, club members, order before the 1st of December to take advantage of that exclusive discount. And we'll be sharing on social media our favourite pictures of you in your Restless History merch, so send these in over Christmas morning. And remember, that is www.goalhanger.shop.