The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Some of the French, endeavoring to get out of the vicinity of the burning wreck, had slipped their cables. The nearest of the English took every precaution to prevent the combustible materials doing them injury. The shock of the explosion shook the Alexander, Swiftsure, and Orion to their kelsons and materially injured them. None of the British ships, however, took fire. About seventy only of the crew of L'Orient were saved by the English boats. The battle was resumed by the French ship, the Franklin; and it went on, at intervals, till daybreak. The contest was sustained by four French line-of-battle ships, and four of the English. Finally, two of the French line-of-battle ships and two frigates escaped. Of thirteen sail of the line, nine were taken, two were burned. Of the British, about nine hundred men were killed and wounded. No accurate account was obtained of the French loss. The estimate which represented that loss at five thousand was evidently exaggerated. About three thousand French prisoners were sent on shore. Kléber, the French general, wrote to Napoleon, "The English have had the disinterestedness to restore everything to their prisoners."

After the victory of the Nile, Nelson returned to Naples. He required rest; and in the ease and luxury, the flattery and the honors which there awaited him, he forgot his quiet home, and after a time was involved in public acts which reflect discredit upon his previously spotless name. At Palermo, Lord Cochrane had opportunities of conversation with him. He says, "To one of his frequent injunctions, 'Never mind manœuvres, always go at them,' I subsequently had reason to consider myself indebted for successful attacks under apparently difficult circumstances." Cochrane considered Nelson "an embodiment of dashing courage, which would not take much trouble to circumvent an enemy, but being confronted with one would regard victory so much a matter of course as hardly to deem the chance of defeat worth consideration." This opinion is borne out by a letter which Nelson wrote to his old friend, Admiral Locker, from Palermo: "It is you who always said, 'Lay a Frenchman close and you will beat him'; and my only merit in my profession is being a good scholar." Nelson was himself a master who made many good scholars.

M. Thiers, having described the great naval battle of Abukir with tolerable fairness, admits that it was the most disastrous that the French navy had yet experienced—one from which the most fatal military consequences might be apprehended. The news of the disaster caused a momentary despair in the French army. Bonaparte received the intelligence with calmness. "Well," he exclaimed, "we must die here; or go forth, great, as were the ancients." He wrote to Kléber, "We must do great things"; and Kléber replied, "Yes, we must do great things: I prepare my faculties." It would have been fortunate for the fame of Bonaparte, if he had abstained from doing some of "the great things" which he accomplished while he remained in the East.

The victory of Nelson formed the great subject of congratulation in the royal speech, when the session was opened on November 20th. "By this great and brilliant victory, an enterprise of which the injustice, perfidy, and extravagance had fixed the attention of the world, and was peculiarly directed against some of the most valuable interests of the British Empire, has, in the first instance, been turned to the confusion of its authors."

FOOTNOTES:

[46] The "Battle of the Baltic," April 2, 1801.—Ed.