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Paris.
A lovely morning in the spring of 1801.
The trees heavy with cherry blossom.
The sunlight dancing on the River Seine.
The soldiers exercising their horses in the palace courtyard.
From a first floor window.
A man was watching the horseman.
He wore a long red silk coat, white stockings and black shoes, and he had tucked his left hand inside his jacket.
His lank, dark hair was cut short, Roman style, and his grey eyes were narrowed in thought.
At 31, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, had come a long way from the back streets of Corsica.
Yet despite his victories, one country still defied him.
Britain a nation of shopkeepers, he thought scornfully.
Who cared more for mills and manufactories than for blood and battles?
He crossed to his dressing table and picked up a little marble bust.
There was just one Englishman who made a worthy opponent.
Their great hero, their supposed saviour, this fellow Nelson.
But one day, when the banners of France flew over London, this little sailor would kneel before him, just like all the rest.
Sir Dominic, I think that final sentence is possibly the most chilling that we've ever read out on The Restless History.
And it is of course from your adventures in time Nelson, Hero of the Seas, which came out in paperback a week ago.
And it is a reminder, if any were needed, of just how high the stakes are for Britain during what are now called the Napoleonic Wars.
And we ended last time in the summer of 1801.
Nelson has redeemed himself.
He's once again enshrined as the great hero of England after his victory at the Battle of Copenhagen.
And we described him coming back to England, being greeted at Yarmouth lots of huzzahs and cheers and all of that.
But Britain is a miserable, exhausted, depressed, overtaxed country.
So obviously nothing like Britain now.
Oh, you've gone there.
Unbelievable.
Yes.
Yeah, most people are sick of the war by now.
So the war's been going on for eight years.
Napoleon, of course, across the channel.
His eyes are fixed on Britain.
But war weariness rather than war enthusiasm is the order of the day in London and beyond.
So there's a new prime minister, Henry Addington, who has replaced William Pitt the younger, after a big row about Catholic emancipation.
And one of Addington's defining characteristics is that he's seen as more moderate, so more likely actually to reach a compromise with the new dictator of France.
The question is whether Napoleon wants a compromise at all.
He's been first consul since 1799.
Military victory, military glory is his calling card.
And has he given up on the idea of defeating Britain by land and sea?
No.
Because when Nelson reaches the Admiralty at the beginning of July, his very disturbing news while he's been away in the Baltic, Bonaparte has been mustering his invasion force.
The official French government newspaper, Le Moniteur, has published an appeal for men to join this gigantic army.
There have been reports that in the northern ports of France there are huge press gangs enlisting people for the invasion.
And the British newspapers are full of stories about what Bonaparte and his fellow revolutionary enthusiasts will do when they get to London.
Yeah, so they're in a massive flap.
And I guess that I mean the salient fact that everyone is aware of in London, Paris and in London, is the fact that a successful French crossing of the Channel, the transportation of an army from France to English soil, is really the one operation that could end the war in a single day.
Because all Napoleon needs to do is to get a force onto English soil.
Britain's military forces are puny compared to those under Napoleon's command.
And then if he can seize control of the naval bases directly in their path, above all the bases up the, nor so on the on the Thames, Estuary and Chatham.
Yeah, you know, epic theme of a recent episode right, listeners will remember, these dockyards are the great smithies of british independence and status as a superpower.
If they can be knocked out, then britain effectively is knocked out as a rival to france and it's game over.
So it's understandable that the people in britain would be in a panic and it's understandable that napoleon, who of course has had a massive run-in with the royal navy at the battle of the nile, caused him all kinds of problems.
It's understandable that Napoleon would be keen to kind of seize this opportunity to end the war in a day.
I think something for listeners to get into their minds is that if you, especially British listeners, if you think about the spirit of 1940, dunkirk and the battle of britain and the possibility that hitler will strike at any moment, and the sort of chilean spirit, if you imagine that, but not just in one summer but in year after year during the napoleonic wars, with sort of peaks, and this is one of those peaks yeah, Invasion scares.
Invasion scares.
So Addington's government has already put in place preparations for the invasion.
They've called up volunteers.
They've driven loads of livestock inland, away from the coast.
They've barricaded the main roads from the channel ports.
But actually, to go back to the 1940 parallel...
As in 1940, there is a sense that the political establishment wants to find a figurehead to inspire the people, to fill the people with confidence in this darkest hour.
Who could that person be?
It's only one candidate, isn't there?
And that's the person who won the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of Copenhagen.
Horatio Nelson, who has returned exhausted but straightaway he's offered this job that's created especially for him by his old boss, Lord St.
Vincent, formerly Sir John Jervis.
They say we'll make you commander of the defences of the mouths of the River Thames and the River Medway, as well as the coasts of Sussex, Kent and Essex.
So it's a new kind of job for Nelson, this.
Well, it's defensive, isn't it?
Right, exactly.
He's on the attack.
There's a land element.
He's never good on land, as we will discover.
So it sounds quite Churchillian, but there are definitely downsides.
So one downside is that the men they give him for the job are absolutely useless.
Well, they have a ludicrous name, don't they?
The sea fenceables.
It's like something out of a nursery rhyme went to sea in a pea green boat or something.
Well, that's basically the the vibe, so they give them the sea fenceables.
So basically the way it works is, If all your navy is at sea and you're about to be invaded by the French, they call for the sea fencibles.
And these are basically oystermen.
It's dad's navy.
Yeah, exactly.
It's dad's navy.
Exactly.
They're like old watermen, fishermen and whatnot, none of whom want to be there at all.
They hate that being called up, they hate the discipline of the Royal Navy and some of them.
My favourite fact about them is that there was one of Nelson's officers complained.
He said a very large proportion of the sea fencibles under my command have got only one leg, so they have wooden legs and basically whenever we put to sea they all fall over seriously.
So they have to stay below decks because they're kind of lurching around the deck.
I mean, I suppose if they're firing cannon, they could just be plonked down next to the cannon.
Theo is saying, are they press ganged into it?
Yes, they're basically, they don't really get any choice.
They're very disgruntled because they're not...
They're taken away from making their livelihood.
So they're not really making much money from this.
They're paid as sort of pittance.
And meanwhile, you talked about people without legs and stuff.
Yeah.
Nelson, of course, hasn't got his arm, hasn't got his eye.
Yeah.
And, as we heard at the end of the last episode, his hypochondria or is it hypochondria is absolute peak.
Um, i mean, is he actually ill?
I mean, is he in any fit state?
To No, he's in no fit state.
He's got eye infection constantly.
He's got these sort of night sweats.
He's constantly dripping with sweat because he's got a fever.
He's also seasick.
I mean, this is one of the weird things about Nelson.
Nelson suffered very badly from seasickness.
And he's dosing himself bizarrely with rhubarb and peppermint in an attempt to combat all these various ailments.
I don't really think it works.
But the bigger issue, I guess, is the thing that you alluded to.
He's just not very good on the defensive.
Attack is his, you know, it's his instinct.
But, I mean, attack is the best form of defense, isn't it?
So...
He has the French forces on the other side of the channel.
And, as he has shown at Copenhagen, he's quite good at attacking the land defenses with a naval task force.
So options there, right?
Yeah.
And at the beginning of August...
He gets some bomb vessels.
He goes on a daring kind of intrepid raid at Boulogne and he damages seven of the French ships.
And actually he comes back from that and he says to London, I don't think that Napoleon is coming.
I think he hasn't got anything like the invasion force, especially the sea power, necessary to win control of the channel and to transport his army.
And he's right.
He is right.
Because actually, the invasion scare is massively overblown.
There's no prospect of the French coming.
But the problem with this is that Nelson then succumbs to complete overconfidence.
He thinks, well, Bonaparte's obviously not coming.
So I might have a little crack at him myself.
And he goes back to Boulogne two weeks later, 15th of August, a surprise night attack.
Now, people who've been listening from the very beginning will know if there's one thing that Nelson is terrible at, it's making surprise attacks at positions on land like Tenerife.
The difference this time is he's not leading it, is he?
He's not standing in the boat having his arms shot off.
No, he's not.
And I mean, spoiler alert, it goes catastrophically wrong.
It's a disaster.
And Nelson says, if only I'd been there, it would have been completely different.
Ignoring the evidence of the fact that he'd very much led from the front of Tenerife and that had been a disaster and he'd lost his arm there.
On this occasion, 900 of them go.
Of the 900, 45 are killed and 128 wounded, and they don't inflict any damage really on the French at all.
They come back.
One of the men who dies is this young lieutenant called Edward Thornborough Parker who Nelson, had a sort of massive, almost like a crush on this guy.
He was a massive favorite of for Nelson, like a son to him.
Yeah, I think it's the filial dimension of it because Nelson is now old, you know he had his stepson Josiah, who was who was hopeless and who he over promoted but Josiah did save his life.
To be fair to Josiah, he did, but he proves to be a hopeless captain and I think that's clearly one of the problems with with Fanny is that she hasn't given him a son and this boy he, you know, he thinks yeah, you know I.
I think he's wonderful.
And then he dies and he dies.
It's Nelson's fault.
Nelson absolutely sobs at his funeral, makes a great spectacle of himself and orders that a lock of Parker's hair is cut off and says I want this hair to be buried with me.
I think it actually was buried with him.
So quite sort of, um, Yeah, quite extreme.
But just to stick up for Nelson's term of command as a guardian of the channel.
So just to quote John Sugden despite Boulogne, the end had been creditable.
During his watch as the guardian, no hostile foot had stepped on English soil, nor had a single British vessel been captured within the limits of his station.
So unglamorous, but it achieves its goal.
There's no French invasion.
So hooray for Nelson.
This is the last action of the campaign because actually, what happens?
At the end of September, this new Addington government signs a provisional deal with the French, which will evolve six months later into the Treaty of Amiens.
And to simplify this, it's a massive simplification but basically both sides will give up quite a lot of their conquests.
So the British promise that they will give up Menorca and Malta and the French will withdraw their troops from central and southern Italy.
Now, at the time, there were people, particularly what are then called Tories, who say well, this is a terrible mistake.
First of all, the French have been allowed to effectively keep their satellite, their puppet republics, in Holland and Switzerland and in northern Italy, and they can use these as a launch pad for future attacks.
And more seriously, they say, this isn't going to last.
Bonaparte is a monster.
He'll never honor the deal.
All he thinks about is conquest and all of this.
He's just buying time to prepare for the next round of fighting.
And I mean the interesting thing is Nelson's reaction to this, because you would suspect that he would be very hostile to it.
Yeah.
Um, And he is very hostile to the idea of surrendering Malta that he had spent so much time blockading and everything.
But in general, he's actually quite positive about it.
So he says, not a bad piece, all things considered.
I think we talked about this in the last episode that despite the excitement that he finds in war, he's not a warmonger.
He doesn't revel in bloodshed.
I think that's true.
I think there's that.
I think the fact that he is exhausted and you know he can't he's got his eye infections and he just wants to have a rest.
And he wants to spend time with Emma.
And the Emma issue, right?
Because, of course, it's only a few weeks before, since he was having nightmares about her and their Prince of Wales.
Yeah.
And that's all calmed down.
I'm glad to say it has calmed down.
So peace has come.
He's allowed to go home.
And so it is that on the 23rd of October His carriage crosses the River Wandel and he turns down the lane to his new house, Merton Place in Surrey.
This is the house with which he and Emma was associated.
Yeah.
And so today Merton is on the Northern line, in zone four or five or whatever, very much part of greater London.
But back then it's very leafy.
The river Wandel is a river that joins the Thames.
There is industrial development along it, but you know, there are fish in the river.
It's, Quite a bucolic scene.
Yeah, it is.
And Emma's been house hunting, hasn't she?
She had found the house.
The estate agent had said it's a terrible buy.
Don't touch it.
But Emma had ignored this.
And they spend, I think, the equivalent of something like £12 million on it today.
Yeah, it's an expensive house.
And it will be very expensive to run.
And to renovate and improve.
Because that is something that they do with great gusto.
Because basically there are two houses.
They knock them together together.
And then they have to buy up various additional plots of land to get rid of the roads that are running through them, because otherwise people will be gawping at them.
They're popular with the neighbours, aren't they?
There's about 800 people in Merton and most of them are farmers or work at farm labourers.
They're delighted to have a celebrity. a national hero as their neighbour.
And most people say that he's a nice man.
He keeps himself to himself.
You know, what's the quote?
Strongly tinged with melancholy, retired and domestic in his habits.
So, you know, he's not...
He doesn't come the sort of Lord of the Manor with them.
Well, throughout this period, he's still haunted by his ambition to do an advertising executive retiring to Provence equivalent, which would be going to Bronte in Sicily.
He has this dream of going there.
But actually, he finds this country retreat.
He loves it.
So there's fishing for Sir William in the River Wandel in the canal.
Nelson obviously can't do that because he hasn't got an arm.
There's a farm.
You know, he enjoys that.
And he loves the house which Emma has very tastefully decorated with loads and loads of pictures, portraits and busts of himself.
Yeah, well, we'll come to this.
This is controversial with his naval colleagues.
And he adores it.
And it kind of, it, again, he has this kind of fantasy of what he wants it to be.
And I think the fantasy comes true.
So he says, we will eat plain.
We'll have good wine, good fires and a hearty welcome for our friends, but none of the great shall enter our peaceful abode.
I hate them all.
So this sense of, You know, he's withdrawing from his critics.
He's withdrawing from all the rows he's been having with his superiors at the Admiralty.
This is going to be where he's going to settle down.
And I think it's a happy household.
Nelson and Emma are very benign and generous employers.
They have a vast kind of domestic staff, among whom the most exotic is fatima.
Yeah, we talked about that, didn't we?
Yes, the who had been rescued from a slave ship um in off the nile and serves emma as her personal maid, And in 1802 she's baptised at Merton Church.
And also they're all the kind of the farmhands and their friends who come and they have lots of children and Nelson adores children.
So again, this makes him happy.
But Dominic, there are complications as well, aren't there?
It's not absolute paradise.
Yeah.
Now listeners can always rely on you Tom, to present the most, the sunniest possible portrait of the Nelson Minaj.
But they can also rely on me to be the shower of.
Yes.
The serpent in the garden.
Thanks.
So first of all, there's money.
There's a big money issue.
So Nelson, you may recall, was only made a baron by George III and not a Viscount, because he wasn't rich enough.
George III said he won't be able to sustain a Viscount's lifestyle.
George III was not wrong.
So merely to raise the deposit for this £12 million house, he has had to sell lots of stock, and he's had to take out the diamonds from the various jewels that have been given to him as sort of presents from foreign rulers and replace them with paste.
So there's a slight sense of being hard done by, I think, when he moves in.
He shouldn't have had to do this because the government should have looked after him.
And I think that's what's feeding into his.
You know we're not going to have the great and the good.
Come and stay with us, because they're screwing me out of my diamonds and not giving me the money I deserve.
I'm sorry to say that I think the Hamiltons do rather feed this. as we shall see.
In fact, a theme of the next few years is anxiety about money.
So to give people a sense, in the money terms of the day, Nelson made about £4,000 a year.
But of that, he has to give £1,800 to Fannie.
As in her allowance, this is basically the financial deal he's offered her to go away.
At the same time, Merton is very expensive to run.
So he spends more than £3,000 on food and wine alone at Merton.
The upside is that Sir William Hamilton has said, well, I will pay half.
That brings us to the Sir William Hamilton issue.
There's a problem there, isn't there?
There is.
He's kind of you know, he's been dismissed from his post in Naples and come back slightly under a cloud and hasn't been given a pension.
And so I think actually quite a lot of the Nelson Waring about the emma going after the prince of wales stuff, i think emma basically is approaching the prince of wales to try and get william a pension and it doesn't work completely.
So when nelson says, i mean he effectively says sir william is pimping you out, that is what is happening.
I mean that is exactly Sir William Hamilton's plan, I think.
So Sir William Hamilton is now 71.
He's visibly in decline.
He spends a lot of time at the Royal Society and other kind of learned societies in London.
He loves his fishing.
He does.
So he comes back to the house and fishes.
But he has for form's sake.
He has to maintain a house in Piccadilly because the government basically haven't given him a decent pension.
He's running out of money as well.
Now, what exacerbates all this is the fact he has a wife.
He loves spending money.
I guess in the way that someone who has had no money, who knows what it is to live on the streets and have not a penny.
It's difficult, I guess, if you've had that upbringing to behave abstemiously.
Well, if your identity, I suppose, and your sense of self-worth, I mean, it's not an unfamiliar story.
If your self-worth and identity are based on spectacle, on show, on fashion, on all of those kinds of things.
I mean, she's always running up massive debts.
So in today's money, in 1802 alone she spent more than a quarter of a million pounds on jewelry, for example.
And the other thing she has done which, of course, Fannie didn't do enough, which is one of the things that did for her was, as you said, she's basically turned the house into a Nelson shrine.
So there's an awful lot of Nelson merch at this point, and a lot of it has been bought by Emma.
Yeah.
And so wherever you look in the house, there are prints of Nelson, his battles.
The dinner service, the tea service, the coffee service have all been engraved to celebrate his battles.
I think she's also buying memorabilia associated with herself as well.
She is indeed, yeah.
There are quite a lot of prints and paintings of Emma.
So there's a slightly – I hope some of our American listeners will not be offended when I say it's a slightly Mar-a-Lago scene.
And –
Even at the time, some visitors are absolutely appalled by it.
So there's a mate of Nelson's called Lord Minto who quoted before.
Yeah, we met him in Vienna, didn't we?
Where he was comparing Emma to a barmaid.
He had first met Nelson in Corsica in the 1790s.
When he comes to merton place he's horrified by it and it's interesting, he doesn't just blame emma, he does blame her, but he blames nelson as well.
The whole establishment and way of life is such as to make me angry as well as melancholy.
She's in high looks, but more immense than ever.
She goes on cramming Nelson with trowels of flattery which she goes on taking as quietly as a child does pap.
The love she makes to him is not only ridiculous, but disgusting.
Not only the rooms but the whole house staircase, and all are covered with nothing but pictures of her and him of all sizes and sorts.
An excess of vanity which counteracts its own purpose.
If it was Lady Hamilton's house, there might be a pretense for it.
To make his own a mere looking-glass to view himself all day is bad taste.
I mean, that's the inimitable voice of the British visitor to an American house, isn't it?
Well, it's the inimitable voice of the British upper classes towards new money, basically.
Yes, it is.
Exactly.
I mean, that's what it is.
And also he comments and I can believe this that Nelson went away from a theater of war is actually quite boring.
Yeah.
Cause he only talks about himself and his battles.
I imagine it's a bit like Napoleon on, um, when in exile on St.
Helena, you know, Napoleon just talked about his own battles and how he'd been hard done by.
And I think Nelson is very similar.
Yeah.
They were coming and talking about pots and vases and. classical literature and stuff like that.
And I can imagine that Nelson in that company he wouldn't have much to contribute and would shrink into his shell.
And actually, some of Nelson's friends pointedly do not visit him at his house.
So the most obvious is Cuthbert Collingwood, who... famously appears at Trafalgar.
And his great friend from his kind of early years of service.
Yeah.
Roger Knight points out in his book.
You know, when Collingwood went to visit friends nearby, he very pointedly didn't go to visit Nelson and Merton, which you kind of think he should have done.
And probably that's because he finds the set up It's just not to his taste.
It's basically a Nelson shrine with Emma kind of talking 19 to the dozen.
Of course, the terror is that she might start doing some of her attitudes Tom, and no one wants that.
I think in Naples, Emma was a star.
She was the friend of queens and of aristocrats.
And that simply hasn't happened in Britain, because they're She offends, I think, both the taste and the social mores of the upper classes.
And I think that's a real problem for Emma, but also, therefore, for Nelson.
And particularly because they've made such a scandal of their relationship.
Yeah.
And because they've made a scandal of the relationship she and Sir William are shunned by their very high society.
They are not welcome at court.
They're being mocked all the time in cartoons.
And I think Dominic, it's a reminder that obviously Nelson has sacrificed things for their relationship.
He sacrificed his marriage.
But Emma has sacrificed things as well.
I think she would have socially been much better off if she had not embarked on the affair with Nelson.
Yeah, I think that's probably fair.
People might have been prepared to cut her some slack.
As a Lady Hamilton who is not committing an adulterous affair, i think she'd have always found it difficult, wouldn't she back in london?
I think she'd have always.
There would always have been people who look down their noses at her.
But she might have been cut more slack.
I think a little bit.
Yeah, but she makes it worse.
She's very bad at her own pr so whenever she does go out in london she says to people very loudly Sir William has been so hard done by such a brilliant man.
He should be in the palace at Lambeth.
Nelson should be a duke greater than Marlborough.
And so people say, God, these Hamiltons, that ghastly people, just massive sponges and whinges.
Here's Sir William.
Said to the government, I've run out of money.
Can you settle my debts, please?
And the government said, no, sell your art collection.
Why should we settle your debts?
And I think what happens is that they, in this period, they do feed a trait that Nelson already had, which is this kind of neediness and this self-pity.
I think one of his least attractive traits that he's always moaning moaning at his superiors, saying that he's not being taken seriously enough, that he should have better rewards, sort of this kind of thing.
It's a bit like.
Do you remember when, wasn't it david beckham?
There was a leaked message?
Yes, he wanted a knighthood.
He wanted a knighthood, and he was absolutely furious.
What more do i have to do?
But to be fair to him, he got it in the end.
He did, he did so i think if you nag hard enough, maybe you get there.
That's the lesson.
There's a lesson for you there, tom.
So some listeners may well say well, this is all just ghastly snobbery from the establishment.
You know, poor old Emma, poor old Nelson.
Well, I mean, I think it is.
Well, I think there's an element of truth that it is snobbery, but, you know, they're not saints.
Even Nelson's not a saint.
Tom, I hate to break it to you.
And Emma does, she does let herself down in this regard.
She is waging a long campaign against Fanny still.
And she is writing to Nelson's relatives and saying to them Fanny is a wicked bad, artful woman with a cold heart and infamous soul.
And all of this, I mean, this shows her at her worst, I think.
She also has an animus, doesn't she a little bit against Edmund, Edmund Nelson, who she knows doesn't approve of her, because she says to the relatives Edmund is just Fanny's dupe.
Edmund is Fanny's puppet and all of this kind of thing.
Now, actually we know Edmund was incredibly close to fanny.
He saw her as a second daughter, he adored her and when nelson kicked her out, edmund said to her i would happily come and live with you in bath and actually fanny said no, Because she said I don't want to drive Horatio against you.
This will drive a wedge between you and Horatio.
Which is, you know, poor old Fanny.
I think Fanny's brilliant.
Brilliant, but quite boring.
Well, yeah, but maybe I like a boring person.
Yeah.
You know, I'm more tolerant than you are, Tom.
I mean, everyone always says that about me.
I'm such a tolerant.
They do.
Such a tolerant and kind person.
So if I may make one last attempt to win Nelson back in Christmas 1801, another heart-rending letter.
Do, my dear husband, let us live together.
I assure you I have but one wish in the world to please you.
Let everything be buried in oblivion.
It will pass away like a dream.
And Tom, how does Nelson reply to this?
He completely ignores it.
And the comment on the letter is opened by mistake by Lord Nelson, but not read.
That's harsh, isn't it?
So a few months after that, Edmund finally died.
He died in Bath.
He had his funeral in Burnham Thorpe.
Everybody, all the other Nelsons went.
But Horatio Nelson did not go.
He said he was ill.
Roger Knight in his biography says, come on, you know, we all know what's going on here.
Basically, Nelson feels really guilty and embarrassed about his father and their relationship and how the turn his private life has made.
Yeah, but also the classic, you know, you don't want to take your new partner.
You know, she doesn't want to go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he doesn't go.
Edmund's death is pretty bad news for Fanny actually, because the rest of the family then cut her off.
Some of Nelson's fellow officers, though, did keep in touch with her, didn't they?
So Thomas Hardy, who in many ways is actually quite an unattractive man, with his enthusiasm for the lash.
He made a great effort to keep in touch with Fanny.
He used to have breakfast with her.
And there's a letter he writes to his brother and said, I've just had breakfast with Fanny Nelson.
She's one of the best women in the world, he said.
High praise.
And I think it's interesting that in the wake of all this, You can tell that Nelson is feeling bad about himself, because he then arranges to go on a kind of publicity tour in which loads of people will turn out and give him huzzahs and say how brilliant he is.
So he goes.
In the summer of 1802 he and the hamiltons go on a trip to wales.
And actually it's prompted by a greville who is emma's old you know, she'd been mistress to him eons before and he wants to develop a port in wales.
So that's the ostensible reason that they go.
But actually it's like a kind of rock star on tour.
And I think that it it plays a crucial role in establishing Nelson as a genuinely national hero and Because no one has ever done this before.
I mean, maybe royals have on occasion, but it is like a kind of royal progress.
He's the first commoner to do this.
And it has this, you know, it kind of seals the relationship between him and the people of Britain, I think.
Yeah.
I think there's a slight melancholy to Nelson, though.
Do you know this?
Of course.
Yeah.
These years when people went to dinner they would say you know, Emma does all the talking and he sits there very quietly, sort of staring out of the window.
And he was always wearing black.
I mean, that's not because he's in mourning.
It's just because he often he dressed in a very conservative style ironically, given who he's living with.
Well, I think actually that when he, when he comes back to Merton, I think he is happy with Emma there.
And, I think particularly after what happens in April 1803, which is when Sir William Hamilton dies.
I mean, Emma mourns him.
Nelson mourns him.
He dies in Emma's arms.
Nelson is holding his hands.
And Emma's terribly upset about it, partly emotionally, but partly also emotionally because it unleashes additional money problems, because she'd been hoping to be left lots of money in his will.
But actually Hamilton has left his estates to a relative and she just gets this income of 700 pounds a year.
And I think that's because Hamilton is assuming that Nelson will be able to look after her.
So it's a problem.
And Hardy, who doesn't like her at all, kind of basically gloats over it.
How her ladyship will manage to live with the hero of the Nile now.
I'm at a loss to know, at least in an honourable way.
And it's very, very Jane Austen again.
The sense in which It's never just about your personal emotions.
It's always about your income.
However, money problems aside, it does now mean that essentially, Emma and Nelson can live together as a married couple in all but name.
And I think that This makes both of them as happy as either of them have ever been in the course of their lives.
And for both of them there is a kind of novelty in being a happily married inverted commas domestic couple.
Because Andrew Lambert, in his biography, quotes this amazing fact which I'd never, kind of never, have thought of before.
He says that when Nelson returned ashore from abroad in October 1801, it was the first time that he had ever slept in his own house.
He'd never done that before.
Yeah, because he'd been living with his father or been in hotels or whatever.
Or on ships most of the time.
So a real novelty.
And for Emma to live with Nelson.
I mean, it's the first time she is living with a man who she hasn't been pimped to.
So I think there is, you know, there is real happiness there.
However Dominic, the problem is that even when the sun is shining, there are always clouds massing in the background to block out the rays.
What's really frightening is if those clouds turn out to be the storm clouds of war.
And do you know what?
Over the winter of 1802 1803, there have been growing fears that the Peace of Amiens, as its critics claimed, was just a sham after all.
So both Britain and France have basically spent the peace rearming, the French, in particular spending a lot of money on their navy.
Now, Napoleon has shown no sign of curbing his appetite for conquest.
In September 1802 he annexed Piedmont and he declared himself the president of the Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy.
And then he sent troops to intervene in Switzerland.
So it's clear that he is gearing up for another go.
I suppose, just to put it in the balance, the British have not given up Malta.
Would you, Tom?
Would you give up Malta in the face of such a threat?
No, I wouldn't.
But just setting that in the balance.
Yes, that's fair.
For our French listener, we'll appreciate that.
So by the turn of 1803, the mood in Britain feels very summer of 1939.
We've given Bonaparte every chance to prove himself a man of peace, but he can't be trusted.
And you quoted Andrew Lambert, great naval historian earlier.
Lambert, who is very much a Bonaparte sceptic, if not a Bonaparte phobe.
He's actually got a book out just now on how Britain organises things after Napoleon's defeat to ensure that a Bonaparte will never arise again.
Right.
Well, he says basically...
Bonaparte's long-term aims were such that no British government could ever have accepted them.
He wanted to reduce his neighbors to client states.
His long-term aims were southern Italy, Greece, Egypt, and so on.
There could be no lasting peace with a regime that did not accept the rules of the state system, and this would require a total war.
So on the 10th of May, 1803...
Britain's ambassador, Addington's ambassador in Paris, hands over an ultimatum.
They want the French to pull out of Holland and Switzerland.
They want Britain particularly to keep this naval base in Malta.
They get no reply.
And a week later, Britain declares war.
And everybody knows that this will be.
It's not going to be like the Seven Years' War.
Beating France will be a total national mobilization.
The Napoleonic Wars have been eclipsed, I think, in our popular imagination, by the World Wars as an existential challenge.
But an existential challenge is exactly what they are.
And to give you a flavour, two months into the war William Pitt, who's been ill, comes back to the Commons and he gives an incredible speech to kind of stiffen the nerves of his old colleagues.
Churchillian speech.
He says, this is not just another war.
It's a war against a dictator who's broken all his promises and will stop at nothing.
We are called to struggle for the destiny not of this country alone, but of the civilized world.
This is a war for our property.
It is for our liberty.
It is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation.
It is for our character.
It is for our very name as Englishmen.
It is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.
And I think that, just as Churchill was summoning Britain in 1940 to a total war, Pitt is doing the same.
And it's a great mustering of finance and manpower.
And the focus of that effort is the Royal Navy.
And the maintaining of the Royal Navy in this war is, I think, probably the greatest project undertaken by any state in history up until that point.
And it is a precursor of the total wars of the 20th century.
It is a massive, massive moment.
And of all the Royal Navy's weapons, I suppose two stand out.
So one of them we're very familiar with, Nelson himself.
He's given his orders.
On the day war breaks out, take command of the Mediterranean fleet, proceed to Malta and then head to Toulon, ideally to destroy the French fleet.
And that same day, the 18th of May, he arrives in Portsmouth to take control of the other great weapon.
And this is his new flagship, one of the greatest ships that Britain has ever built.
She is almost 50 years old, but she's been in the dockyards for repairs for three years.
She's a first-rate ship of the line with three decks, 850 sailors, and 104 guns.
The supreme fighting machine, the great weapon to defy the dictator, and her name, of course Tom, is the victory.
Well, do you know, dominic?
I feel so overwhelmed by patriotism that i need to have a break.
I'm sure everyone else does as well.
So let's do that, and when we come back, the war begins.
We all need that sometimes.
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Now Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History and to Total War, Napoleonic Style.
So we're in the late summer of 1803.
Nelson has arrived in Malta.
He's taken over as Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean and he has established himself in command of a blockade outside the French base at Toulon.
And Dominic.
I'm guessing this is a very sweet moment for him, because he'd been acting commander-in-chief before, but then he'd been replaced by Lord Keith.
And the fact that the Admiralty are happy to give him command of the Mediterranean theatre reflects the rise in his reputation, the degree of trust that government is now prepared to place in him.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think he's completely redeemed himself from the low point a couple of years earlier and he is seen as the only man for the hour.
Now, his task might sound a bit dull.
Basically he has to destroy the French fleet, but everyone knows the French fleet is very unlikely to come out to be destroyed.
So it's going to be a question of bottling them up in Toulon, blockading them.
But it's so important because, as you said before the break.
This is a war that for Britain will be won and lost on the seas, not on land.
Because if the French were to win control of the seas, that's it.
If they get control of the channel.
Well, that's the key, isn't it?
Because basically they don't need to win control of all the seas.
They just need to win control of the Straits of Dover for, what, 24 hours.
And obviously the focus of guarding against that prospect for the British is the Channel Command.
But the fleet in Toulon is crucial as well because if they do manage to break out, to slip past the blockade, go out through the Straits of Gibraltar, Then they could join in the invasion of Britain or of Ireland or of Britain's holdings in the Caribbean, which would then act as a possible distraction.
Fleets might be sent from the Channel.
So there's all kinds of jeopardy in play for Nelson.
There is indeed.
And the blockade sounds not as exciting as a battle.
But a blockade is really, really important, both as a defensive weapon and as an attacking one.
Because actually for the next 12 years, Britain's strategy will basically be to blockade France's ports, to suffocate its trade, to squeeze its economy.
And really to persuade France's satellites that they'd be better off if they broke with Napoleon.
And we know now that this strategy works.
It takes a long time, but it pushes Napoleon to construct his continental system.
When the Russians break with the continental system, he invades Russia.
And he makes the terrible mistake, the retreat from Moscow, all of this kind of thing.
All of this you can trace back to that British strategy of basically squeezing him by sea.
The downside, though, of course, nobody knows it then that it's going to work.
And it's really, really hard work, isn't it?
Snelson has 11 ships to the line, 15 frigates, seven support ships, and he has to keep them in play far from home.
The whole time has to keep them healthy.
Well-fed, watered, all of this.
Well, the thing is that, in the long run, Nelson and the crew on the Victory will not set foot on dry land for two years.
So those ships are permanently out there.
Yeah.
There's no break.
There's no leave.
And he spent so that's two years for him in the cabin or on the quarterdeck of the victory, working beneath his portraits of Emma and Horatia.
The victory itself is run by his old mate, Hardy.
And Hardy is... You don't want to get on the wrong side of Hardy.
Hardy ordered 204 floggings in 12 months.
And he had this reputation that if you were doing something wrong, that was a floggable offence, he would glide up unhurt behind you and apprehend you.
And so his nickname was The Ghost.
He's like a terrifying headmaster.
Basically, isn't he misbehaving again?
Holland, you'll see me afterwards for a flogging, and so i guess the upside for nelson is it allows him to to play the um benevolence, i don't think he's playing it, is he?
I mean, i think that's not.
That's his kind of natural instincts.
I think he loves his crew in a kind of manly way.
Obviously, hearts of oak and all that.
But to quote Andrew Lambert again, he's so good on this, to work with Nelson was to love him.
Even the most hard-bitten veterans were unable to resist his courage, commitment, and charisma.
His colleagues were his friends, and he expected their love and loyalty, not mere service.
And I worry that listeners may be thinking that we're over-egging the Nelson adulation.
But I think there is clearly qualities of charisma that you have to keep harping upon, because otherwise his achievements don't make sense.
If he was just a strict disciplinarian, he wouldn't be able to carry this off.
It's the fact that he is able to inspire people to do what otherwise they might not have done.
Well, he does it by, you know, there at sea for a heck of a long time.
He helps them to organize.
I mean it sounds petty, but they have these little plays and musical reviews and he will go to watch them.
He'll tour the decks and chat to the men.
And a lot of captains and admirals do not do this.
There is a distance.
There is not so much of a distance with Nelson.
And also, of course, if you're on board a ship for two years at a time, you need to be supplied, And Nelson isn't all about dash and charisma.
He is also a very, very good organizer of things.
I mean, he knows that his ships have to be supplied.
So you've written that in a year they will need one thousand eight hundred and eighty one tons of bread.
I mean just millions of stuff gallons of beer, tons of beef, pork peas oatmeal butter cheese, vinegar.
And although a lot of this is kind of supplied by the whittling board back in Deptford in England, not all of it is.
Nelson has to source a lot of material, obviously kind of fruit in particular, which keeps scurvy at bay.
So oranges and lemons and the notorious limes that gives Americans the nickname for Englishmen, limeys.
And this is something that he's picked up from St.
Vincent, his kind of great father figure.
The importance of maintaining his men in a condition of health.
And so Nelson says to a physician that comes on board the Victory that the great thing in all military service is health.
And it is easier for an officer to keep men healthy than for a physician to cure them.
His own Vittler on board the ship.
Who's serving him directly on board the ship, he ends up sourcing food from as far away as Russia.
They understand that going aboard.
One of the reasons that they don't allow leave is because there you might pick up infections.
They don't understand how or why, but they know that it's bad.
And therefore, in a sense, you're kind of, you're kept healthy by being on board the ship.
And basically people on board victory do not fall sick.
Well, it's a reminder that Nelson's not just a great warrior.
He's actually a great bureaucrat, because to do all this you know you're messing around with ledgers and you're sending out staff and all of this kind of thing is a good manager.
He's good at all these kinds of things.
And to emphasize the point, they're waiting off too long. for 22 months without a break.
Now, this is not what Nelson enjoys doing.
He doesn't like blockades.
Blockades are very boring.
He would much rather lure the enemy out and destroy them completely.
And that's ultimately his plan, isn't it?
That's his battle plan.
So even while he's maintaining the blockade, he has to kind of give the French a sniff of the possibility that they might be able to slip past, because otherwise he will never be able to have the battle of annihilation that is his great ambition.
Undoubtedly will not surprise listeners to hear that nelson spends a lot of time brooding about his health.
He's got all his night sweats and his heart palpitations.
He's writing to emma to say my eyesight is failing.
I'm so thin that the rings are slipping from my fingers.
My love for you is as unbounded as the ocean.
It's very profound and original.
And he's writing to Horatio as well, isn't he?
Yes, he is.
So this is lovely, actually.
This is really lovely.
He writes his first letter to Horatio in October 1803.
He says, my dear child, receive this first letter from your most affectionate father.
So he's up front there.
Yes.
He's acknowledging her.
And then a few months later, January 1804.
He sends, how old is she at this point?
She's like three, I think.
He sends her a lock of his hair and a watch which I give you permission to wear on Sundays and on very particular days when you're dressed and have behaved exceedingly well.
I've kissed it and send it with the affectionate blessing of your Nelson and Bronte.
Boasting about his titles to his own daughter.
Still boasting about his titles, exactly.
But all the time he is brooding, straining at the leash.
Waiting for this chance, for this showdown with the French fleet because, he knows, one more victory is probably all that it will take to crush them at sea and for good, completely.
They can't have another Battle of the Nile.
They can maybe have one more go, but that's it.
I think he thinks it's going to happen because he genuinely...
I think, sees himself as the agent of divine purpose.
So when he writes letters to the Admiralty, he frames his mission in these terms again and again, in a way that has no comparison with letters written by other figures in the Navy.
Just to reiterate this does require him, even as he's maintaining the blockade, to give the French the sniff of a chance that they might be able to get past him.
So we get to the late summer of 1804.
Addington's government back home has fallen.
Pitt is back as prime minister.
There are more reports of Napoleon building up an invasion force on the Channel Coast.
Nobody knows what Napoleon is planning.
Nelson in September that year turned 46.
He said to friends that he felt like a man lost in the dark.
He's actually thinking at this point of going on leave because he's so tired from the work of maintaining the blockade.
And you can sense on the victory, after 22 months, morale is really beginning to fray.
This is boring, gruelling work.
The logbooks and whatnot show that there are more floggings for bad behavior.
There are more incidents of drunkenness and insolence and insubordination because people are bored.
They're sick of being there.
They're sick of each other at this stage.
So a lot more gliding for the ghost.
Yes, the ghost is having a brilliant time.
And then a bombshell.
The British learn that Bonaparte has struck a secret deal with Spain.
