The War of Wars (42 page)

Only at around four o’clock in the afternoon, as the British fleet approached under full sail, did the astonished French admiral realize Nelson’s intention to attack at once. Brueys summoned his three senior admirals to discuss whether to meet the British at sea or at anchor. The arguments for staying at anchor prevailed: the French crews were inexperienced and could not be expected to sail and fight at the same time; the ships had only provisions for a day and could not escape into the Mediterranean; and three of the French battleships were anyway in poor condition.

The two foremost British ships, the
Zealous
under Captain Hood and the
Goliath
under Captain Foley, were in a race to be the first to engage. The
Goliath
ran up its staysails and suddenly pushed forward, taking the lead. Foley had a captured although inaccurate French chart and did not pause to make soundings as he aimed for the narrow gap between Aboukir Island and the foremost French ship,
Le Guerrier
.

Subsequently Foley claimed he had acted on his own initiative, and in a sense he had; but all the captains were aware of Nelson’s tactics of engaging the enemy at anchor on both sides and Nelson had already told Hood to see if there was enough deep water between the island and the French. ‘Where there was room for a French ship to swing [at anchor] there was room for an English ship to pass,’ Nelson had been fond of saying.

George Elliot (later Sir George), then a midshipman aboard Foley’s ship, took up the story:

When we were nearly within gunshot, standing close to Captain Foley I heard him say to the master that he wished he could get
inside the leading ship of the enemy’s line. I immediately looked for the buoy on her anchor, and saw it apparently at the usual distance of a cable’s length (200 yards), which I reported. They both looked at it and agreed there was room to pass between the ship and her anchor . . . the master then had orders to go forward and drop the anchor the moment it was a ship’s breadth inside the French ship, so that we should not exactly swing on board of her. All this was exactly executed.

The mortars on the island opened up, but their range fell short. The sun was just beginning to set spectacularly fast off the Egyptian coast, the giant red ball visibly inching towards the horizon at around 6.30, when Foley gave the order to fire as he arched around
Le Guerrier
and a full broadside rocked the French ship. Foley put out his anchor to stop the
Goliath
’s momentum, but it failed to ‘bite’ into the sea floor and the
Goliath
shot past to stop opposite
Le Conquerant
, the second ship in the French line, in time to fire a second broadside.

The French admiral in charge of the van, still on his way back from his meeting with Brueys, waved frantically at his captains to open fire – which they were reluctant to do without orders. By the time they did, the second ship, the
Zealous
, was in place to rake the unfortunate
Le Guerrier
with another broadside. The French response was lamentable: they had not even run out most of their guns.

The
Orion
followed the other two ships, dangerously close to the shoals, and slipped in to engage the third French ship on the inside. A French frigate had the temerity to open fire on it, and was destroyed with a single broadside from the
Orion
, which had also raked
Le Guerrier
a third time, bringing down its remaining mast and leaving it a wreck. The
Orion
engaged two ships simultaneously.

The
Theseus
came next, once again pouring shot into
Le Guerrier
, and then navigated the small channel between the British and French ships between broadsides, exchanging fire with the latter, before curving around the
Orion
to engage another French ship; all of this was flawless seamanship of the highest order. The French guns’ elevation was aimed at the other British ships; so the
Theseus
took advantage to run under the arch of the shot. Another British ship
followed on the inside. The British ships could be distinguished in the darkness by the four horizontal lights on the mizzen peak.

Nelson, in his flagship the
Vanguard
, was next and led the way down the outside of the French line, engaging its third ship, the
Spartiate
, which was already under attack from the
Theseus
, between two fires. Pounded by a combined total of 148-guns, the ship quickly surrendered. The
Bellerophon
, behind the
Vanguard
, found itself in the already fallen darkness engaging the huge French flagship,
L’Orient
, with its 120-guns. Two of the
Bellerophon
’s masts fell under the intense fire from
L’Orient
, which set her on fire three times and killed a third of the crew before she drifted off to port crippled. Immediately three more British ships took up the fight against the deadly three-decker.

The brave but devastated
Le Guerrier
had by now struck her colours, as had two other French ships, the
Conquerant
and the
Spartiate
, attacked by Nelson. But he had once again been seriously wounded, an inch of skin falling from his brow over his good eye, with blood pouring down his face. ‘I am killed,’ he said, ‘Remember me to my wife.’ He was carried below for treatment. The French admiral, Brueys, likewise had no sooner dismasted the
Bellerophon
when he was hit, nearly cut in two by a cannonball at 7.30. He refused to go to the infirmary so that he might die on the bridge.

Meanwhile disaster had struck a British ship, the
Culloden
, commanded by Sir Thomas Troubridge, regarded as second only to Nelson in the British fleet. He had sailed too close to Aboukir Island and run aground. With two British ships out of action compared to three French, the battle was far from won.

Then, under fire from three much smaller ships, it became apparent that the giant
L’Orient
was ablaze. Some historians allege, based on a second-hand story from the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, that phosphorous firecrackers had been thrown on to the deck by the British: but this would have been very difficult to achieve with the three-decker French ship towering over the British ships and it was the French rather than the British that carried firecrackers. The French believed oil cans left behind by painters started the fire.

Ensign Lachenede described the crisis on
L’Orient:

Everything at that moment contributed to increase the confusion. The pump, it was found, was broken; the hatches were hidden under mounds of debris; the buckets which we kept on the forecastle were scattered all over the place; we had to have some brought up from the holds; five ships had surrounded us and were firing at us with double intensity. After incredible but futile efforts, we left the bridge deck, which was covered with flaming corpses. The mainmast and the mizzen crashed toward port . . . The ship was burning fore and aft, and already the flames were reaching the 24-pounder battery. And yet in the 36-pounder battery, the men seemed to be unaware of the danger, and they continued to fire vigorously.

At about ten o’clock, after well over an hour fighting the fire, Admiral Ganteaume, who had succeeded Brueys, gave the order to abandon ship. A nine-year-old boy who refused to leave his injured father, Captain Casabianca, was immortalized as the boy who ‘stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled’. The colossal ship blew up a few minutes later, at about 10.15, with a blast that was felt some twenty-five miles away, lighting up Alexandria and Rosetta, sending blazing timbers and bodies far into the air.

After the awesome explosion, there was a ten-minute silence, as all the gunners on both sides, subdued by the spectacle, stopped firing. Out of 1,000 men aboard
L’Orient
, only seventy survived, including a lieutenant who was picked up by a British ship naked except for his hat, which he had saved, he explained, to prove he was an officer. With
L’Orient
sank some £600,000 (around £120 million in today’s values) in gold coins, ingots and diamonds – the treasure looted from the Knights of Malta, which was supposed to finance Napoleon’s expedition.

The French ship
Franklin
was the first to recommence firing after the deathly lull, although two-thirds of that ship’s company had been killed or wounded. She surrendered at 11.30. Another French ship,
Le Peuple Souverain
, was a wreck by 11 p.m.
L’Artemise
drifted ashore and was set on fire by her crew; it blew up in the morning. By then the flagship was no more, six of the French ships had struck their colours, three ships
had gone ashore and the
Tonnant
was a floating wreck, although it ultimately surrendered with 120 men killed and 150 wounded. Only two French ships remained and made good their escape.

An inexplicable element of the whole battle was the failure of the commander of the rear, Admiral Villeneuve, to order his ships to come to the help of those in the van under attack. Napoleon was later scathing: ‘It was only at 2 p.m. the following afternoon that Admiral Villeneuve seemed to take notice of the fact that there had been a battle going on for the past 18 hours . . . it was in Villeneuve’s power to turn the battle into a French victory even as late as daybreak.’ This is clearly unfair, but Villeneuve gave no satisfactory explanation. Still more inexplicable is that Napoleon, who was so frightened of being caught at anchorage by Nelson that he had disembarked his army on the very evening of their arrival, should have left the fleet exposed to British attack for a full month. Perhaps both Napoleon and Brueys genuinely did believe the anchorage at Aboukir Bay was impregnable: if so it was a huge risk to take, for the French navy rarely so exposed itself to the British. It was a colossal and unforgivable mistake on the part of both men.

Napoleon later accused Brueys of ignoring an explicit order to leave for Corfu. This account was directly contradicted by Vice-Admiral Ganteaume, in a subsequent despatch to the minister of war: ‘Perhaps it may be said that it would have been advisable to have quitted the coast as soon as the disembarkation had taken place. But considering the orders of the commander-in-chief, and the incalculable force afforded to the land-army by the presence of the squadron, the admiral thought it was his duty not to quit these seas.’ Brueys was killed in the battle, so was unable to defend himself. But probably, if granted permission, he would have sailed his ships to safety on Corfu. Almost certainly Napoleon’s calumny against Brueys was a lie to protect his own reputation.

It was a famous victory indeed. The French fleet had been virtually annihilated. The French had lost eleven of their thirteen battleships and some 4,000 men to two British ships and some 900 men. More than 3,000 French prisoners had been taken, most of whom were later set loose ashore, as the British could not care for them. At a stroke the
British were masters of the Mediterranean, although a considerable French fleet still remained in the Atlantic. Napoleon’s army in Egypt was stranded. True, the troop transports remained at Alexandria, but without the protection of the French fleet they could be picked off at will by the British.

Nelson, in the aftermath of the battle, despatched Sir James Saumarez with six French prizes to Gibraltar and himself left with three ships for Naples, leaving behind three battleships and three frigates to blockade the coast of Egypt. All communications between Napoleon’s army and France had been severed. Nelson decided against an attack on Alexandria itself because he believed the French defences there to be stronger than they actually were: Generals Kléber and Menou were fearful that he would attempt an attack.

Napoleon, when he learnt of the disaster on 13 August, feigned indifference. He told his officers: ‘Well, gentlemen, now we are obliged to accomplish great things: we shall accomplish them. We must found a great empire, and we shall found it. The sea, of which we are no longer master, separates us from our homeland, but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia.’

Yet the impression further afield of the most unqualified naval victory in the whole conflict was immense. It was felt in Russia, where the new Tsar Paul – the pro-British Catherine had died in 1796 – now began to end his francophile policy and move towards hostility towards France. It was felt in Austria, which was emboldened to re-enter the war against revolutionary France. It was felt in Constantinople, where the Ottoman Emperor had watched aghast Napoleon’s invasion of one of his great provinces. Above all it was felt in Britain, which was desperately in need of good news. A joyous mob gathered in Whitehall, forcing all those who wore hats to doff them in tribute, in an early display of crowd power. Hood said Nelson had saved Europe from anarchy and misery, while Lady Spencer exulted: ‘Joy, joy, joy to you, brave gallant, immortal Nelson! May that great God, whose cause you so valiantly support, protect and bless you to the end of your brilliant career. Such a race surely never was won. My heart is absolutely bursting with different sensations of joy, of gratitude, of pride, of every
emotion that ever warmed the bosom of a British woman – and all produced by you, my dear, my good friend.’ Lady Hamilton wrote to him: ‘If I was King of England, I would make you the most noble, puissant Duke Nelson, Marquis Nile, Earl Alexandria, Viscount Pyramid, Baron Crocodile and Prince Victory, that posterity might have you in all forms.’

When Nelson arrived in Naples after the Battle of the Nile, Queen Maria Carolina exclaimed, ‘Oh brave Nelson! Oh God bless you and protect our brave deliverer.’ The simple-minded King Ferdinand called him his ‘deliverer and preserver’. Suddenly it seemed for the first time that French domination of Europe was not inevitable after all and that those few places such as Naples which still held out could survive. Nelson was made a baron – Lord Nelson of the Nile. Pitt had wanted to confer a viscountcy, but the King was reluctant to confer even a peerage, perhaps disapproving of his support of Prince William. There was a small outcry that he had not been granted a greater title. Pitt ordained that a pension of £20,000 a year be set up for Nelson and his two male heirs (£4 million at today’s values). Fanny Nelson was received by the Queen.