515. Nelson: Attack the French! (Part 2)

It is 1793 and France has declared war on Britain, meaning that the British navy must serve as both sword and shield to Europe. Horatio Nelson is at this time a slim and sickly 34 year old captain who nevertheless burns with the zeal to serve his king and country, and has recently taken over command of the impressive Agamemnon. Meanwhile, the British navy has taken Toulon by the summer of 1793 through diplomatic means - its foothold in the Mediterranean - but is struggling to hold it. Upon arriving in the city Nelson is shocked to find it besieged by the French, under the leadership of one Napoleon Bonaparte - the first time that these two titanic rivals of history will brush shoulders, but not the last. At last the city falls to the French, and the British must go in search of another Mediterranean base. They settle upon Corsica - Bonaparte’s homeland. It is there, on the morning of the 12th of July that during the siege of Calvi that Nelson is struck in the face by a spray of stone and shrapnel, severely blinding his left eye forever more. Will this critical injury prematurely end his promising career? Just as a great armada of Spanish and French ships gathers on the horizon, heralding the coming one of history's bloodiest naval battles... Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the Siege of Toulon, Nelson’s heroic early forays into the Mediterranean, and the dramatic aftermath of his first near fatal injury. _______ LIVE SHOWS *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U. S. A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L. A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D. C., Boston and New York. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Tom Holland?

  For the first time, Nelson realised what he was up against. This was nothing like the American War, for the French Revolution had unleashed something much darker and more terrifying. The unbridled fury of a fanatical mob, the savage passion of a people bent on slaughter. Suddenly, he thought of home, of his father and Fanny, and the little church at Burnham Thorpe, and the gentle fields and sleepy villages of England. And at that moment, he knew he could not rest until these monsters were beaten.

• 0:52Tom Holland?

  But high above Toulon-smoking ruins, a man in a blood-stained uniform gazed coldly across the harbour, and on the face of Napoleon Bonaparte was a thin, cruel smile of satisfaction. So that was a wholly unbiased perspective on the Siege of Toulon in 1793, written by a top historian of the French Revolution, Dominic, namely yourself. And this is from your new book for children, instilling in them a due sense of patriotism and suspicion of French revolutionary fervour. And what's called Nelson, God of the Seas?

• 1:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Nelson, Hero of the Seas.

• 1:34Tom Holland?

  Nelson, Hero of the Seas.

• 1:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  The latest volume, Tom, in the Best Selling Adventures in Time series. And I think people will say, scrupulously fair and forensically researched.

• 1:45Tom Holland?

  So what I will say is that we've done, how many episodes have we done now of the French Revolution? Thirteen, I think?

• 1:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:51Tom Holland?

  And it's good that you're absolutely letting everyone know what your perspective on the French Revolution is, in case anyone had been in any doubt.

• 1:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's not necessarily my perspective, Tom. It's Horatio Nelson's perspective.

• 2:01Tom Holland?

  Ah, that's what it is.

• 2:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's what it is, you see. This is what a great literary artist does. He takes you into the minds of his characters.

• 2:07Tom Holland?

  So today Nelson is going to... War and we left him at the end of our first episode, France declared war on Britain. This means that the Royal Navy must be summoned to serve both as sword and shield. And Nelson has been given a ship, hasn't he?

• 2:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 2:23Tom Holland?

  The Agamemnon.

• 2:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. So let's remind ourselves, Tom, where we got to. The French have declared war on Britain. We're at the beginning of seventeen ninety three and Captain Nelson, who is thirty four years old. This slender, sickly man, but a man who is fired by a really extraordinary sense of self belief. Kind of Churchillian, actually, the kind of self belief that in a lesser person would be the act of a lunatic. But Nelson can talk the talk, he can walk the walk, as people say.

• 2:50Tom Holland?

  A God given mission.

• 2:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So in February seventeen ninety three, we find him at Chatham Dockyard, probably your favourite dockyard.

• 2:57Tom Holland?

  It is my favourite dockyard, yes.

• 2:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Preparing his new ship for sea. And this is the Agamemnon. We talked in the last episode that Nelson is the embodiment of something bigger and so is the Agamemnon. It was twelve years old, it was built of English oak, two hundred feet long, fifty feet wide. I mean, this is a very, very expensive and high class piece of.

• 3:15Tom Holland?

  Kit, isn't it?

• 3:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly, hardware. And his job, I know you love victuals and supplies.

• 3:20Tom Holland?

  I do, because it's so important. We touched on this in the previous episode, but just to reiterate. A ship cannot spend long times at sea unless it is very well supplied. So Nelson makes sure that the Agamemnon, you know, there's biscuit and there's flour and water and beer and wine. And I mean, they actually bring on bullocks, live bullocks at times. But also you have to keep people supplied with fruit. So this is where the American term for the English limeys comes from. Because Royal Navy vessels are loaded down with limes and oranges and lemons and all kinds of things to keep scurvy at bay. And Nelson understands this as well as anybody.

• 4:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 4:00Tom Holland?

  In the Navy and his men are always incredibly healthy.

• 4:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  And this is something that, you know, you have a lot of initiative as captain. So it's not just that you take it, it's given to you. You have to order a lot of this stuff yourself. So he has ordered the wine, the port, the sherry, he's ordered the tea and Turkish coffee, a keg of tongues, which sounds a little bit. Intimidating, but also this would appeal to you, Tom, since you're always interested in the religious dimension to history. Nelson goes out of his way to order hundreds of prayer books and hymn books for his crew from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge because he is, of course, a vicar's son and he believes that, you know, regular services, which some captains are not brilliant at keeping up, Nelson is very keen to keep them up because he thinks it's really important.

• 4:44Tom Holland?

  Well, I suppose it builds a sense of community, doesn't it?

• 4:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  Absolutely, it does.

• 4:47Tom Holland?

  And it reassures everybody on board that God is an Englishman, which is very important when fighting the French.

• 4:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, which is, as we will see from the story.

• 4:54Tom Holland?

  It's absolutely true.

• 4:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  It certainly appears to be. So to get his crew, again, for an officer, for a captain, the onus is really on you to find a lot of your crew. So he puts up posters and hands out pamphlets in Norfolk, gets a lot of people from Norfolk. For his lieutenants, he gets old friends from his days in the Caribbean. As his midshipman, as the kind of apprentice officers, he gets the sons of well-to-do Norfolk families, so people that he might owe a favour to, or people that are friends of his father or something like that.

• 5:24Tom Holland?

  And one of these is his stepson.

• 5:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  Josiah.

• 5:27Tom Holland?

  Who is 13.

• 5:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. Good and bad news for Josiah. The good news is he is, he is big, he's strong, he's manly, he's very enthusiastic. The bad news is that by common consent, Josiah's absolutely useless and a complete and utter waste of space.

• 5:42Tom Holland?

  Well, although he will feature heroically at the end of this episode, so.

• 5:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  He will do. So that's why it's important to bring him in now.

• 5:49Tom Holland?

  So bear that in mind. Of course, there are press gangs that go out.

• 5:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  There are press gangs.

• 5:53Tom Holland?

  But by and large, Nelson has a good reputation and so people want to serve with him because they know that he will do right by them, that there's a good chance of winning prize money. So this is crucial part of what you want. Anyone who's read Patrick O'Brien's novels will be familiar with the fact that Royal Navy captains are always looking for the chance to make a bit of extra money by capturing in enemy ships. And generally, there's a feeling that Nelson is someone you want to serve with. He will look out for you, he will do right by you. And that's incredibly important.

• 6:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is very important. And the thing about doing right, we don't know many details of a lot of the crew. We just know the names and the muster roles. But we do know, I think this is a lovely detail, that he took 20 ships. Boys from London's Marine Society, which was a charity that basically gave poor and destitute boys a second chance at sea. So they're all from broken homes or they're from troubled backgrounds. Of these 20 boys, we know that only six of them could read and write. They are undoubtedly malnourished, small for their age, and they're given by the charity a little sea outfit with a comb and a needle and thread and some clothes. And all the rest of the details of their lives are kind of lost to us. So we have to imagine these 20 boys on the ship with the prayer books, with

• 7:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  the keg of tongues and all these limes and whatnot. And they're probably better fed, healthier and better looked after than thousands of boys would have been back home in Britain.

• 7:12Tom Holland?

  Yeah, well, so to quote, just on the topic of health again, because it is so important. N M Rogers, a great historian of the Navy, he said that sailors in the Royal Navy must have been the healthiest body of British subjects in the world. And since Nelson is particularly attentive to this, probably, you know, the sailors on the Agamemnon are even healthier than the vast mass of sailors. And you were talking about boys, we don't know much about them, but they're, of course, the midshipmen, these little boys, you know, 13 years old when they first sign up. We have a record from one of them when he set sail with the Agamemnon, and he wrote to his father and said, Nelson is acknowledged to be one of the first captains in the service and is universally beloved by his men and officers.

• 7:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 7:52Tom Holland?

  So that's good to know, isn't it?

• 7:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, that's very good to know. So they set off. They join Admiral Hood's squadron off the coast of Cornwall. That's about 50 ships of them. And of those 50 ships, 18 of them are what are called ships of the line. That means they are fighting ships. The rest of them are frigates and kind of support ships and things. And this is a taste of Britain's naval might, because actually, at that point, 1793, there are more than 600 ships of various kinds in the Royal Navy. There are 14,000 guns, there are 100,000 men. So this is a mighty, mighty enterprise. Britain does not like fighting wars on land. Britain's strategy is always, we will basically give subsidies to whoever it might be, the Austrians, the Prussians, to do the fighting for us.

• 8:36Tom Holland?

  Which is what they'd done in the Seven Years' War, hadn't they? To great effect.

• 8:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Effect in the Seven Years' War, and this is what we are hoping to do again. And I think the strategy at this point, so for William Pitt, for the other British politicians, they are thinking, you know, maybe this will be another three, four, five year war. We'll get the Austrians and the Prussians to take care of the French on land. We'll do the business by sea and then hopefully it'll be done and dusted. And this revolutionary nonsense will be put to bed.

• 9:02Tom Holland?

  Because unlike Goethe, they haven't been at the Battle of Valmy and seen a new age of humanity beginning. So they don't fully appreciate what they're up against.

• 9:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think that's absolutely right. If you'd said to them, you're going to be at this for what? The next best part of 20 years, 22 years? I mean, they would not have believed you. Anyway, Admiral Hood has been given the Mediterranean Squadron. And the task of this squadron is to go down into the Med to aid the Austrians in Italy and to strengthen the bonds with other smaller European powers who might be useful allies. So a good example is the Kingdom of Naples, which of course will play a very prominent role in Nelson's life. So off they go. And by the summer of 1793, they have reached Toulon, which is the major French naval base on the south coast of France.

• 9:49Tom Holland?

  I mean, basically, just to emphasise, I mean, essentially, Toulon is France's Mediterranean sea power. Without Toulon, France cannot operate in the Mediterranean.

• 10:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Absolutely right. So Toulon, as people may remember who listen to our series about young Napoleon, Toulon is a city in turmoil. There's been a royalist uprising in Toulon. And when Hood arrives, he sends a message to the royalists and he says, listen, if you hand over your dockyards, your ships and your forts to the Royal Navy, I will protect you and I will guarantee you against the revolutionary, the Jacobin armies. And amazingly, they say, okay, that sounds like a good deal.

• 10:28Tom Holland?

  Let's do it.

• 10:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  And at a stroke, Hood has won control, or so it seems, of France's preeminent southern naval base. However, getting too long is one thing, but keeping it is a bit more tricky. Toulon is kind of stuck between the mountains and the sea. It can't really supply itself, so they need supplies. And as you were saying before, nobody is better at kind of getting limes, rustling up a few lemons.

• 10:54Tom Holland?

  A few bullocks.

• 10:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Than the Nelson. And so Admiral Hood says to Nelson, look, can you go over, please, to Naples? King Ferdinand there is pretty sympathetic to us.

• 11:04Tom Holland?

  Well, I mean, very sympathetic.

• 11:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Tom Holland?

  Firstly, because he's a king.

• 11:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 11:09Tom Holland?

  And, you know, he, as a king, he knows what happens to kings with French revolutionaries. In particular, his wife, his queen, Maria Carolina, is the sister of Marie Antoinette. So she really knows what's going on.

• 11:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  She hates the revolution with an absolute burning, white-hot passion.

• 11:26Tom Holland?

  Well, understandably. I mean, Ferdinand's a terrible man. There's nothing he enjoys more. I mean, he'd be up there with Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser. I mean, he loves shooting animals of every description.

• 11:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think that's a very harsh comparison.

• 11:39Tom Holland?

  No, no, no. Well, okay, he's worse, isn't he, really?

• 11:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's far worse.

• 11:42Tom Holland?

  He'll piss in a chamber pot and then throw it at his servants.

• 11:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  He will.

• 11:45Tom Holland?

  And there's a notorious occasion where he made his coachman swallow a live frog. He's a terrible man.

• 11:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Franz Ferdinand never did that. I want to go on the record.

• 11:52Tom Holland?

  We'll put that on the record.

• 11:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  I couldn't believe it when you brought Franz Ferdinand into this because Ferdinand IV is a shocking man. Anyway, Nelson arrives outside Naples. Now, of course, to somebody like Nelson, even though he's well-travelled, Naples must have been an extraordinary sight. So beneath Vesuvius, smouldering over the bay, and Naples is one of the biggest cities in Europe at this point.

• 12:10Tom Holland?

  Third after London and Paris.

• 12:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is a confusing, chaotic jumble of palaces and churches.

• 12:16Tom Holland?

  It's a city of contrasts, I think.

• 12:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. Where's the Neapolitan tourist board? It's a place seething with excitement and tension and drama, a very melodramatic kind of place. When he gets there, he meets, well, he meets one person who's not very melodramatic and another person who is. The person who isn't is the British envoy to Naples, Sir William Hamilton.

• 12:35Tom Holland?

  Who featured in the second season of Love Island.

• 12:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, of historical Love Island.

• 12:39Tom Holland?

  Britain's most famous cookhold, but that's preempting the story.

• 12:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  I'm not a massive fan of Sir William Hamilton. I think he's a bit of a drip, actually.

• 12:45Tom Holland?

  He's not a drip.

• 12:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think he's a drip.

• 12:47Tom Holland?

  I think he's a drip. Tremendous contribution to classical scholarship, so that's wonderful.

• 12:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  You arrive and he's just going to talk to you about the Etruscans.

• 12:53Tom Holland?

  Well, unless you're Mozart, in which case he would host you.

• 12:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he would, but I'm not. I'm not interested in volcanoes and he's passionately interested in volcanoes.

• 13:01Tom Holland?

  But also you love a monkey, don't you? He kept a pet monkey.

• 13:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, but I mean, I'd expect that from everybody in Naples. I think that's.

• 13:07Tom Holland?

  And he has tremendous tastes in women.

• 13:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, Emma Hamilton is his much younger wife. I'm not a massive fan of Emma Hamilton, as you will know, Tom.

• 13:15Tom Holland?

  There we disagree.

• 13:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  She is a lady with a colourful past.

• 13:19Tom Holland?

  You've put down here, strumpet.

• 13:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well.

• 13:22Tom Holland?

  I mean, she was.

• 13:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, yeah. Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong.

• 13:26Tom Holland?

  No, but you know, a girl's got to do what she's got to do. And again, we mentioned Gerda. Gerda's a big fan of her. She does these kind of classical poses. She's very brave. She's very loyal. She's very warm-hearted. And I think above all, she is fun.

• 13:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  She's also narcissistic, cruel, attention-seeking, and incredibly annoying.

• 13:45Tom Holland?

  Well, you can't be everything.

• 13:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  We're going to do a future episode on this. Let's now get bogged down. This is clearly going to be the point at which the rest of this history falls apart. They really take to Nelson. They think Nelson is brilliant. And they promote his interests with the king and queen. They say, come on, make sure you give him everything he needs. So off he goes back to Toulon. And when he gets back to Toulon, he discovers, oh, no, terrible scenes. A fellow called Bonaparte, Corsican artillery officer, has got all these guns, like, up to the heights, he's bombarding the forts. The defences of Toulon are cracking. Nelson's not there to see the fall of the city. Hood sends him off to patrol the coast of Italy, but he's in La Vorno.

• 14:22Tom Holland?

  Leghorn.

• 14:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Leghorn, as the British call it, where the first boatloads of refugees arrive. And he is shocked by their condition. He writes to Fanny. He says, fathers are here without families, families without fathers. Terrible scenes. They've had to evacuate Toulon. The French have seized it. And of course, the French, they sack the city.

• 14:42Tom Holland?

  Well, because it's full of counter-revolutionaries. And this is the kind of the peak of the terror.

• 14:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  So actually, I thought this might be a chance to think about those two characters, because Nelson and Napoleon are often thought of in opposition to each other, aren't they?

• 14:53Tom Holland?

  Well, you know, the Abel Gantz film, the famous black and white film. And there's a sequence where Napoleon is fleeing Corsica with his family and a Royal Navy ship. An officer sees it through his telescope and says, should we fire? And his captain says, no, let's not. Let them be. You know, they won't do any harm.

• 15:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's Nelson. It's Nelson.

• 15:12Tom Holland?

  And Nelson had wanted to finish off Napoleon. So even in France, I guess, there's a kind of recognition that Nelson is perhaps Napoleon's only worthy adversary.

• 15:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, Napoleon, later on, when he moved into the Tuileries Palace, he genuinely had a little bust of Nelson.

• 15:25Tom Holland?

  Yeah, his great rival.

• 15:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  And I think one of the interesting things about them, they are both enormous egotists. So we were talking about Nelson's great sense of his own star quality. I mean, the only person who really rivals that in the in the politics of the late 18th century is Napoleon, who also believes himself to be a star and is driven by this gigantic, overweening ambition. And actually, I think one of the big differences between them is that Nelson is constrained by his institutional fealty. So he's within an institution that channels it.

• 15:54Tom Holland?

  But I think also by temperament, I mean, he's not interested in political power.

• 15:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, you're right.

• 15:59Tom Holland?

  He's a conservative, small c conservative. He wants to maintain and uphold the frameworks. I mean, he's a Burkean, really.

• 16:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he is.

• 16:06Tom Holland?

  And also, I think he's not a warmonger. He enjoys the excitement of command. He recognizes that he will profit personally from war. But throughout this period, he does think that Britain should be making peace, you know, on fair terms, of course.

• 16:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hmm.

• 16:18Tom Holland?

  He's not committed to war, I think, in the way that Napoleon.

• 16:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 16:21Tom Holland?

  But having said that, there is a parallel because what Nelson wants to do at sea, in other words, win a complete victory, annihilate the enemy. That is what Napoleon is aiming to do on land. And just as that is what is going to enable Napoleon to establish French rule over Europe. So also Nelson understands that the kind of victories that he's after are essential if Britain is to survive and maintain its command of the seas.

• 16:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Agreed. But in the short term, they actually need a new base in the Mediterranean now that too long has gone. And as it happens, the ideal place is Napoleon's homeland, is Napoleon's birthplace of Corsica. So Admiral Hood says, right, we'll go for Corsica because that's the perfect base. It's between France and Italy. Let's go for that. So in the spring of 1794, they target Bastia, first of all, on the eastern coast. They're bombarding the city walls. Nelson's in the thick of the action. There is a moment when he is almost killed. So an enemy musket ball smashes into a boulder. Right next to him. Huge splinters fly everywhere and they fly right past him, almost hit him. And had they hit him, there was a good chance that could have been that.

• 17:29Tom Holland?

  Well, I mean, he will, of course, be hit in due course.

• 17:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. And it's a reminder, actually, of how for all the sort of swashbuckling side of it, this is a really serious business, you know, one mischance, one misstep, just like putting your head above the parapets in the trenches in the First World War or something. And that can be it over. I mean, that's the nature of naval warfare.

• 17:45Tom Holland?

  And also just to point out that Nelson is always in his full uniform.

• 17:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 17:51Tom Holland?

  Because he feels it's the responsibility of an officer to

• 17:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  He absolutely does.

• 17:54Tom Holland?

  Essentially attract attention so that his men know where he is.

• 17:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, he leads from the front. He is not an officer. In fact, when he's given opportunities to, oh, why don't you stay at the back and direct us from there? He always says, no, I have to be at the front.

• 18:07Tom Holland?

  Well, in a sea battle, it is expected that British officers will stand up. Everyone else can kind of, you know,

• 18:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Tom Holland?

  crouch down as the bullets whistle. An officer has to stand up. I mean, it requires insane levels of bravery. And of course, in the long run, it will be fatal for Nelson. But in the very long run.

• 18:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  So then the bastia falls, they move on to Calvi on the western coast of Corsica. This is the last French fortress on the island. And it's going to be a really tough nut to crack. It's backed by mountains. They have a hundred guns at Calvi. And Nelson knows it will be difficult. He actually writes at this point to Fanny, "A brave man dies but once, a coward all his life long. We cannot escape death. Should it happen, recollect that it is the will of him in whose hands are the issues of life and death." That's very Nelson. He's kind of, not exactly fatalistic, but he's realistic about the dangers.

• 18:52Tom Holland?

  Or you could say he has a feeling that God has

• 18:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  God is with him, that his life is in God's hands.

• 18:56Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  So it's slow work. Nelson again, leading from the front and bombardment. And it's early on the morning of the 12th of July, when the enemy batteries open up. And Nelson is talking to his officers and a French shot slam into the sandbags they've got heaped around them. And actually, what happens is it sends up a huge spray of stones and shrapnel right into Nelson's face.

• 19:19Tom Holland?

  Do you know, Dominic, I've seen the very spot.

• 19:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Have you?

• 19:21Tom Holland?

  I've been to the very spot and there is a marble plaque written in French.

• 19:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Tom Holland?

  And it's absolutely peppered with bullet holes.

• 19:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Really?

• 19:28Tom Holland?

  And I thought that's the Corsicans showing their contempt for Nelson. Nelson, but then, of course, I realised that every sign of Corsica is peppered with bullet holes. It's nothing personal.

• 19:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  The lovely thing about that is it completely contradicts what Theo has written in the chat. Because Theo, who's been chafing and fuming during the whole of this recording, has written, "No one in France knows who Nelson is. Genuinely, nobody has even heard of him."

• 19:48Tom Holland?

  Well, I suppose the Corsicans would say that Corsica isn't really France.

• 19:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  I suppose they would. Maybe they haven't heard of him because the signs are all peppered with bullet holes. Who knows?

• 19:55Tom Holland?

  Maybe.

• 19:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Anyway, he collapses. He is in agony. His hands go to his eyes. He's immediately taken, you know, to the doctors, to the surgeons. From this point onwards, he can never again see out of his right eye. His right eye has been hit with sand and all this rubbish and it's, that's it, it's gone.

• 20:12Tom Holland?

  So Dominic, to be honest, I think we've had quite enough drama as it is for this half. So let's take a break at this thrilling point. And when we come back, we'll see whether Nelson recovers from his eye injury, or whether he retires and no one ever hears of him again.

• 20:31Tom Holland?

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• 20:44Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 21:14Tom Holland?

  Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We left you on absolute tenterhooks, wondering whether the injury to his eye that Nelson sustained at the Siege of Calvi will finish off his career, whether he will never be heard of again. Dominic, does it finish off his career? Or will we be hearing more of this promising young captain, Horatio Nelson?

• 21:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  Farid is keen to get stuck into Nelson, here at the Seas. I'm very happy to say that this is not the end of his career.

• 21:39Tom Holland?

  What's amazing is that he doesn't even enter The injury in the ship's logs or even put himself on the official list of the wounded. And he essentially tells her, oh, it's just a scratch.

• 21:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, I mean, that's what he writes to Fanny, literally, just a little scratch. But he's not telling her the truth. He's deliberately hiding the fact that he will never be able to see out of that eye again. And actually, he never wears an eye patch or anything like that. And it's not that he'd lost his eye. His eye is there, but it looks just a little cloudy.

• 22:05Tom Holland?

  Cloudy, doesn't it?

• 22:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, and he can only see out of his left eye. Calvi falls, so Corsica is now in Britain's hands. And then there is a sort of a lull, as is so often the case for naval wars. They're basically sent off to blockade and to faff around on the coast of Italy. Blockading when the French, when they appear, stopping the French interfering.

• 22:25Tom Holland?

  Endless kind of blockade of Legorn out there. I mean, that's what it's all about.

• 22:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Lot of stuff in Legorn, in Livorno. At this point, it seems pretty likely that Nelson, a lot of the sailors, of course, when they go on land.

• 22:38Tom Holland?

  Yeah, they're in every port.

• 22:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. They're corrals in various ways, shall we say. And it seems very likely, I think, there's an opera singer called Adelaide Correglia that Nelson had either a flirtation or a full-blown relationship with.

• 22:51Tom Holland?

  I think pretty clearly he did.

• 22:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because he's jealous of another officer, isn't he? When this other officer sits next to her at dinner or something like this. There are trace elements in the sources of a relationship. So he's then just faffing around for a long time, nothing happening. There's been a change at the top, so Admiral Hood, one of his patrons, is gone. And a guy called Admiral William Hotham comes in and he's just a bit old and a bit sickly and.

• 23:16Tom Holland?

  He's nice, isn't he?

• 23:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's a decent chap.

• 23:17Tom Holland?

  He's not a man for charging at enemy lines.

• 23:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, he's the kind of what we have, we hold, let's be careful, let's not, you know, make any silly mistakes. And that's not Nelson at all.

• 23:25Tom Holland?

  He's very much the kind of admiral I would have been.

• 23:29Tom Holland?

  Oh, you know, let's just take it.

• 23:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Let's take it easy.

• 23:32Tom Holland?

  Yeah, no, not take it easy, but I just don't, you know, I don't want to fancy it, a bit worried.

• 23:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  What do you think I'd have been, Tom?

• 23:37Tom Holland?

  Well, I'll tell you who I think you would be, but we'll come to him in the second half.

• 23:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 23:42Tom Holland?

  Very imminently.

• 23:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exciting. So there is an exciting moment because they hear reports of French sails off the coast of Genoa. They all shoot out and they track them down and they catch up with them. And Nelson then shows tremendous courage.

• 23:56Tom Holland?

  So just two things to say about this. The first is that the French sails, I mean, they have a tremendous array of revolutionary names. So one of them is called the Satira.

• 24:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, the revolutionary song, it will be fine.

• 24:06Tom Holland?

  Yeah, the revolutionary song. And that's a kind of absolute monster, isn't it? It's the largest two-decker ship in the world. So absolutely enormous ship. But another ship is called the Songalot. So Nelson can have no doubt that he is facing a revolutionary fleet. But also the other thing to say, Nelson has been in the navy by this point for 24 years, and he's never seen a fleet in action. This is his first engagement in a battle.

• 24:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  I hadn't thought about that, but it's true. Yeah.

• 24:32Tom Holland?

  So you can imagine, he is so excited.

• 24:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  He can't wait, can he? He gets stuck in, he says, right, we'll go straight for, what do you think he goes for? The Satira, the largest two-decker ship in the world. Eighty-four guns, completely outgunning his own ship, Agamemnon.

• 24:48Tom Holland?

  And do you know who this is very bad news for?

• 24:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  The French.

• 24:51Tom Holland?

  It's bad news for the French, but it's also very bad news for the seven bullocks that he has on.

• 24:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh no, do they have to throw them overboard?

• 24:57Tom Holland?

  Throw them overboard.

• 24:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because when they beat to quarters and when they clear the decks for action, that often means that the livestock just jettisoned.

• 25:04Tom Holland?

  Piled overboard.

• 25:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  So he sails right up to the Satira. Nelson thinks is he will hold his fire until the last moment. You know, get in position so that every shot will count. And then he turns his ship and lets fly, firing again and again, pouring these broadsides into the sides of the Satira. And because the Satira is so large, the Agamemnon is much faster. It is deadly. It's like a kind of cobra striking at an elephant.

• 25:31Tom Holland?

  Well, one of the sailors says that the Satira could have swallowed up the Agamemnon.

• 25:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 25:35Tom Holland?

  But it doesn't matter. I'll tell you what John Sugden wrote about this, about the broadside, that it was no amateur broadside, but a performance no other ship in the Mediterranean could have surpassed. I mean, that's the pinnacle of training that Nelson has brought his crew to. And it's lethal, isn't it?

• 25:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's incredibly effective. The fighting goes on all day. The Sairas effectively crippled. They then have a kind of break to have a sleep. And then they continue the next morning and

• 26:01Tom Holland?

  It's like a test match.

• 26:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, it is. I mean, a lot of battles are like this, though, aren't they? They take days. The Saira has got away and it's been towed or escorted by a smaller ship called the Sanceur. And Nelson catches up with them again. He blasts them again, and the noise so deafening that in Genoa, people think that they can hear a storm coming from across the sea. And about 11 o'clock on the morning of the second day of the test, the two French ships strike their colors. But that means they haul down their colors, they surrender. And this to have captured two ships.

• 26:32Tom Holland?

  Yeah, amazing. And especially one that's the largest

• 26:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, of its kind.

• 26:35Tom Holland?

  Two-decker in the world.

• 26:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly.

• 26:38Tom Holland?

  So the measure of Nelson's success is that he has lost three men. Four of his men are wounded, but the French have lost over 100. And I think that it confirms Nelson's sense that attack is always the best policy. Because he now tested his assumption that British gunnery is better than French. And specifically, I think he feels that the Republican Navy, it's lost lots of its officers. It's lost lots of its self-confidence, is pretty deficient in fighting spirit relative to his own men.

• 27:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, I think that's true.

• 27:10Tom Holland?

  And so that kind of absolutely confirms for him that faced with an enemy fleet, go for it.

• 27:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's exactly what he thinks. And he then says to Admiral Hawtham, right, we've got these. Let's go for the rest of the French fleet. And Hawtham says, no, I don't think we will. He says, and I quote, we must be contented. We've done very well. And Nelson is gutted by this because he felt this was an opportunity to go after the French fleet and to knock them out of this part of the Mediterranean. And Hawtham, as far as he sees it, has been neglectful. He has not taken the chance. But Nelson is the kind of commander who thinks that whenever you get the slightest glimmer of a chance, you must always, always go for it.

• 27:51Tom Holland?

  So the Nelson touch, and that's what Hawtham lacks. But fortunately Hawtham gets replaced, Christmas 1795, by a new commander.

• 28:01Tom Holland?

  And this is the man who featured in the opening passage that I read at the head of this episode, and this is John Jervis.

• 28:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yep.

• 28:09Tom Holland?

  And John Sugden, great biographer of Nelson, has a tremendous description of Jervis. His toad-like figure consisted of a stocky body, an expanding paunch propped up on thick tree trunk legs. But, I mean, in case you think that this is a man who's not qualified to command a fleet, I mean, he really is. He's called Old Oak.

• 28:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's a great name.

• 28:30Tom Holland?

  Because basically, he seems hewn out of English oak. And I think that if I'm a Hotham.

• 28:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, Tom, that's kind. I love John Jervis. I wouldn't say I was toad-like, but I mean, I suppose I'll just have to suck it up.

• 28:41Tom Holland?

  I think if you want to be compared to oak, you also have to suck that up.

• 28:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, what I wrote about him myself was, he had no patience for slackness and openly berated weaker men till they burst into tears.

• 28:51Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 28:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is that how I behave?

• 28:52Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 28:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, that's, well.

• 28:54Tom Holland?

  Can I do Chatham High Street? No.

• 28:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  On the other hand, he could be kind to his men and love playing practical jokes on his junior officers.

• 29:01Tom Holland?

  Well, Theo will vouch for that.

• 29:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, anyway, Jervis, I think he's a terrific commander. He's a bit of a martinet, maybe.

• 29:08Tom Holland?

  He is, but he's brilliant at spotting talent lower down.

• 29:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 29:12Tom Holland?

  Recognizing captains who have it and saying, yeah, I'm backing you. And obviously, this is brilliant for Nelson, isn't it?

• 29:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  So he comes in, he says, look, this is a shambles. The ships are all dirty. He orders soap, he says, wash the ships. There's too much drinking, there's girls on board, they've let the standard slip. Nelson and the other younger captains love Jervis. They're like, brilliant, this is a guy who will take the war to the French. However, at this point, the French also have a new commander, and this is the man who we last encountered looking out over.

• 29:41Tom Holland?

  With his thin, cruel smile.

• 29:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. That is Napoleon Bonaparte. So Bonaparte has taken the war in Italy by storm. He has smashed the Austrians west of Genoa, he's got into Milan, he's crushed the army of the Pope. This is all in the spring of 1796. And he is rolling up the Allied forces on land.

• 30:03Tom Holland?

  And by doing that, he's rolling up the ports that the Royal Navy can visit.

• 30:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Genoa closes its harbour to the Royal Navy, the Royal Navy are forced out of Genoa. Then the Spanish, who had previously been on the other side, change sides and say, actually, we're going to back the French after all.

• 30:18Tom Holland?

  Shocking behaviour from Spain, isn't it?

• 30:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Very bad behaviour from Spain.

• 30:21Tom Holland?

  So Nelson has this, Nelson comments on what's going on. We English have to regret that we cannot always decide the fate of empires on the sea.

• 30:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, well, I mean.

• 30:31Tom Holland?

  I suppose that is the lesson, isn't it?

• 30:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is the lesson, absolutely.

• 30:33Tom Holland?

  Command of the sea can keep you safe, but it can't win you the war necessarily.

• 30:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. And then in the autumn of 1796, Jervis gets orders from London. And these orders, he can't have been completely surprised, but he's clearly very disappointed. The orders are, withdraw from Corsica, shut down your operations in the Mediterranean, pull back to Gibraltar, the Mediterranean is lost. You know, we have lost, the Mediterranean campaign has all been for nothing.

• 30:59Tom Holland?

  So it's a defeat, I mean, it's a palpable defeat.

• 31:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Nelson is devastated by this. He writes to Fanny and he says, the tragedy of all this is, we've actually never been fitter, we've never been better disciplined, we have a really good commander in Jervis, but we are scuttling out of the Mediterranean with our tails between our legs. And it's a real, it's dishonourable, he says, to the dignity of England. And he's not wrong, it is dishonourable to the dignity of England. Jervis gives him one last job, says, there's a British garrison on the island of Elba, of course, and an island that we'll feature later in the, in the story, in the story. He says, go off to Elba and get this garrison, which he does. On the way back, there's a skirmish with a couple of Spanish frigates. And it's during this skirmish that he first is really acquainted with a young lieutenant,

• 31:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  because he's on a ship now called the Minerva, because the Agamemnon's being repaired. There's a lieutenant on the Minerva called Thomas Masterman Hardy. And Hardy is a slightly sort of wooden figure himself, isn't he?

• 31:58Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Huge man, huge, slow, stooping.

• 32:02Tom Holland?

  Yeah, like a kind of ox.

• 32:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Ox is exactly it. But Hardy works incredibly hard, he's incredibly brave, and he's very loyal to Nelson.

• 32:11Tom Holland?

  Well, and also Hardy basically sacrifices himself. He gets captured by the Spanish and to ensure that Nelson can get away with all his prizes and things like that. So Nelson owes him one.

• 32:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Tom Holland?

  Then Hardy goes overboard and they go back and have a look for him. So Nelson has. You know, saved Hardy's life. So they are kind of bonded by that.

• 32:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 32:32Tom Holland?

  In a way that will keep them together right the way up to the very last minutes of Nelson's life.

• 32:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  The mix of those two men, they become the huge man and the much smaller man. They become a sort of bit of mice and men or something.

• 32:44Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  They become quite a good kind of double act, don't they?

• 32:47Tom Holland?

  Well, it's asterix and obelix.

• 32:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. Yes, asterix and obelix is a good comparison. In the meantime, Nelson is now heading back towards Gibraltar. And there he has been told rendezvous with Jervis's fleet off the southwestern coast of Portugal. But they've had news. The Spanish fleet has set sail. They think it is going to head west through the straits. It's going to head somewhere into the Atlantic. And there it may well link up with the French fleet off the coast of Brittany and form this great armada. And basically, the British desperately want to intercept the Spanish fleet before this can happen. So as they're going through the straits of Gibraltar, you know, it's very dark and foggy, incredibly thick fog. Nelson and his lookouts are kind of scouring the horizon for the Spanish.

• 33:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  And overnight on the 11th of February, the lookouts on the Minerva say, we can hear voices in the fog. We can hear, we can see lights.

• 33:39Tom Holland?

  And it sounds a bit Spanish.

• 33:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  And it sounds, yeah. And they realise they are literally sailing through the Spanish fleet. But in the fog, with their own lights dimmed and making no noise, they have not yet been detected. So on they go through the fog. Eventually, the fog clears. Dawn comes. The lookout spot the masts of Jervis's fleet, which is waiting off Cape St Vincent. And Nelson races to get to Jervis's fleet to tell him the news. And Jervis is waiting impatiently aboard his flagship for news of the Spanish so that he can begin the attack.

• 34:14Tom Holland?

  And Dominic, what is the name of Jervis's flagship?

• 34:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's named Tom. Is Victory.

• 34:20Tom Holland?

  Well, absolute scenes. So the fleets are lining up off the Cape of St Vincent. And what will ensue the following day is one of the most extraordinary and heroic battles in the entire history of the Royal Navy. And we will be coming to that in our next episode. And if you simply can't wait, and honestly, I wouldn't be able to wait for it, you can, of course, hear it straight away. If you're a member of the Rest is History Club, and if you're not, you can go to therestishistory.com and sign up there. If not, it will be out very soon, in due course. So we will see you very soon on the high seas to meet with the Spanish fleet. Bye bye.

• 35:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Bye bye.