The Flag of Freedom (45 page)

You couldn't make it up.

However, I
have
made up his adventures in the Levant. I doubt I have been unjust to his character but if I have, he deserves it.

A note on the Levant, by the way. The Levant is now taken to mean the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Bosphorus to the Nile, but in the eighteenth century it was used to describe the much wider region covered by the Ottoman Empire, including the Greek islands and the eastern provinces of North Africa, including Egypt.

And turning to Egypt – Nathan's intelligence of the French invasion plans are derived from the secret intelligence reports of Spiridion Foresti and Sir Sidney Smith, an
English naval Captain who had been taken prisoner by the French and learned of the plans while he was in Paris. It is also an historical fact that their lordships discounted these reports – preferring to believe that the French intended to invade Sicily or Portugal or the British Isles themselves. This was one of the reasons Nelson was reduced to chasing shadows across the Mediterranean.

I suppose the idea that the French were planning to invade Egypt was as nonsensical to their lordships as the notion that swallows flew to Africa for the winter. And they had a point, at least as far as the French were concerned. It made no strategic sense at all – unless Bonaparte seriously thought he could march an army of 60,000 men 2,000 miles through hostile territory, desert and mountain without a reliable chain of supply. Maybe he did. Generals are not always noted for their sanity.

Here are some telling notes from his diary:

January 1st, 1798, Paris: Paris has a short memory. If I remain longer doing nothing, I am lost. In this great Babylon, one reputation quickly succeeds another. After I have been seen three times at the theatre, I shall not be looked at again. I shall therefore not go there very frequently.

January 29th: I will not remain here; there is nothing to be done. They will listen to nothing. All things fade here, and my reputation is almost forgotten; this little Europe affords too slight a scope; I must go to the Orient; all great reputations have been won there. If the success of an expedition to England
should prove doubtful, as I fear, the army of England will become the army of the East, and I shall go to Egypt. The Orient awaits a man!

The French government, of course, was glad to see the back of him. Fearing a military coup, they did not really care where he went so long as it was out of France – taking his army with him. Egypt seemed just about right.

Which brings me to the Battle of the Nile.

I think I've described this accurately, even if from the POV of a fictitious participant. I had the pleasure of working on another docudrama about the life of Nelson, again for Channel Four, in 2005 – which gave me the opportunity to study the battle in detail and to film a reconstruction. Where I've departed from the known facts is in including the presence of the frigate
Unicorn
and in having Nathan bring the news of the French fleet to Nelson, as well as presenting him with a chart of the Bay of Abukir which he had taken from the
Meshuda
.

It is true, however, that Nelson was in the Bay of Coron at the time, and that the news was brought to him by an ‘uniden tified vessel' which had spotted the French fleet off Alexandria. It is also true that Nelson was in a wretched state of health, physically and mentally, having spent two months in a futile search for the French, a search that had taken him to almost every part of the Eastern Mediterranean. He later admitted that those long, fraught weeks of high tension, doubt and disappointment had knocked years off his life, and there were those at the time who feared for his sanity.

But then, no sane person would have ordered a night
attack on a superior enemy force in a well-defended position in the shoal waters of the Bay of Aboukir.

Certainly, it was the last thing the French Admiral expected. He had sent half his crews ashore to forage for food and water, and he thought he had at least eight hours to prepare for an attack the following day. If Nelson had been entirely sane, he might have waited until dawn, when the French would have been in a far better state to fight him.

As for the charts – it was later reported that Nelson had three charts of the area, none of them very good or trustworthy, and that his success in navigating the shoal waters of the bay was down to a combination of luck and skill. However, the French were astonished at the confidence with which the British ships entered the bay, avoiding the shoal waters with remarkable accuracy. Only one British ship – the
Culloden
– went aground. This
might
have been luck, but the French certainly believed that Nelson had the benefit of expert advice, possibly from some local pilots he took off a wine-brig. It is also true that he was studying a chart of the bay at the time he was hit in the head.

The battle was proclaimed throughout Europe – apart from in France, of course – as a great British victory. It was, and it led to the creation of a Second Coalition against the French, including Austria, Britain and Russia. But it tends to be forgotten that Nelson's mission was to stop the French from reaching their target – and in that he failed. Twice, he missed the French Armada at sea, if only by a whisker. When he finally caught up with them, they had already landed Bonaparte and his army in Egypt, and
Bonaparte had no further use for the fleet that had escorted them there. The French army went on to win several more battles against the Turks and the Mamelukes, and when Bonaparte wanted to come back to France he did so – in two frigates. He seized power in a military coup, smashed the new coalition in one decisive campaign and forced a humiliating peace on England.

Arguably, the greatest consequence of the Battle of the Nile was in India. Immediately after the battle, Nelson sent one of his officers to Bombay with news of his victory, coupled with the warning that Bonaparte might attempt to march east and join with Britain's great enemy, Tipu Sahib, the Tiger of Mysore. After a number of adventures the officer, Lieutenant Duval, reached Bombay, where his news spurred a young Anglo-Irish officer into action. The resulting campaign saved India for the British. The officer was Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington.

But that is another story.