Volume II Part 19 (1/2)
”As to your lords.h.i.+p's motive for sending a flag of truce to our government, it can never be misconstrued; and your subsequent conduct has sufficiently shewn, that humanity is always the companion of true valour. You have done more; you have shewn yourself a friend of the re-establishment of peace, and good harmony, between this country and Great Britain. It is, therefore, with the sincerest esteem, I shall always feel myself attached to your lords.h.i.+p; and it is with the greatest respect I have the honour to subscribe myself, my lord, your lords.h.i.+p's most obedient and most humble servant,
”H. Lindholm.”
On these respective letters, the judicious part of mankind will judge for themselves. We need not have blushed for a Lindholm, but we have reason to glory in our Nelson. Olfert Fischer, notwithstanding the arguments of his able apologist, must always be considered as having been superabundantly solicitous for the safety of his own person: in leaving two different s.h.i.+ps, by his own confession, while the respective crews continued fighting; and finally retiring, to continue his command, under cover of a powerful battery on sh.o.r.e. His roundly a.s.serting, that we had two s.h.i.+ps for one, and that he was told two English s.h.i.+ps had struck; his ungenerous and distorted application of Lord Nelson's n.o.ble acknowledgment of the general bravery of the Danes; and the low source of solace that he finds in disingenuously limiting the advantage gained by the victory to the possession of a few wretched wrecks, without at all appreciating the grand political consequences which it so fully accomplished; exhibit, in the whole, a disposition meanly selfish, conspicuously sordid, and deplorably deficient in all the most lofty qualities of mind. What a contrast to our immortal Nelson! whose single sentence, in his letter of rebuke for this man--”_G.o.d forbid that I should destroy an unresisting Dane!_ When they became my prisoners, I became their protector!”--deserves to be charactered with letters of diamonds on the shrine destined to cover the hero's hallowed remains.
Lord Nelson did not think it necessary to differ with his friend Lindholm, an undoubted man of honour, about punctilious particulars. To his own mind, however, or that of an enemy, he would not abate a particle of what he had a.s.serted. The following statement is copied from a private memorandum of his lords.h.i.+p's, in which he acutely turns the scale of superior force against the Danes.
”Lindholm ought to have omitted the guns of the Russell, Bellona, Agamemnon, Amazon, Alcmene, Blanche, Dart, and Arrow; as the two first were aground; and, although within random shot, yet unable to do that service expected from seventy-four gun s.h.i.+ps. The Agamemnon was not within three miles; the others, frigates and sloops, were exposed to a part of the Crown Battery and the s.h.i.+ps in the other channel, but not fired upon by the eighteen sail drawn up to the southward of the Crown Islands. Therefore, sixty-six guns are to be taken from the British, and a hundred and sixty-six guns added to the Danes: viz. sixty-six, Crown Batteries--(I think, there were eighty-eight)--and a hundred for the batteries on Amack; besides random shot from the s.h.i.+ps in the other channel, citadel, &c.
Therefore, the account ought to stand thus--
Guns, by Lindholm's account 1058 Deduct, as above 366 ---- British force in action 692 ----
Danish force, by Lindholm's account 634 Add, I say, at least 166
Danish force 800 British force 692
Superiority of the Danes 108”
Though Lord Nelson could not have rested without satisfying himself of the precise fact, he saw no necessity for entering into any altercation, on so trivial a topic, with General-Adjutant Lindholm. He contented himself, therefore, with immediately closing the subject, by the following very liberal reply.
St. George, May 3d, 1801.
”MY DEAR LORD,
”I was yesterday evening favoured with your reply to my letter of the 22d of April; and I have no scruple in a.s.suring you, that if Commodore Fischer's letter had been couched in the same manly and honourable manner, I should have been the last man to have noticed any little inaccuracies which might get into a commander in chief's public letter; and if the commodore had not called upon his royal highness for the truth of his a.s.sertions, I never should have noticed his letter. You have stated, truly, the force which would have been brought into action, but for the accidents of their getting aground; and, except the Desiree frigate, no other frigate or sloop fired a gun to the southward of the Crown Islands. I have done ample justice to the bravery of nearly all your officers and men; and, as it is not my intention to hurt your feelings, or those of his royal highness--but, on the contrary, to try and merit your esteem--I will only say, that I am confident you would not have wrote such a letter. Nothing, I flatter myself, in my conduct, ought to have drawn ridicule on my character from the commodore's pen; and you have borne the handsomest testimony of it, in contradiction to his. I thought then, as I did before the action, and do now, that it is not the interest of our countries to injure each other. I am sorry that I was forced to write you so unpleasant a letter; but, for the future, I trust that none but pleasant ones will pa.s.s between us: for, I a.s.sure you, that I hope to merit the continuation of your esteem, and of having frequent opportunities of a.s.suring you how I feel interested in being your sincere and faithful friend,
”Nelson and Bronte.”
”Adjutant-General Lindholm.”
After a correspondence between Vice-Admiral Cronstadt, Adjutant-General for the Swedish Fleet and Commander in Chief at Carlscrona, with Sir Hyde Parker, which terminated in a.s.surances of a pacific tendency, Russia remained the only object now worthy of any serious regard. The Baltic fleet wintering in two divisions, at the two great naval a.r.s.enals of Revel and Cronstadt, and the s.h.i.+ps in the former station being locked in by the ice several weeks longer than at the latter, it was then about the time when it might be possible to get into Revel. For that port, therefore, the British fleet immediately steered: but was met by a dispatch-boat, on the 22d of April, from the Russian Amba.s.sador at Copenhagen, announcing the death of the Emperor Paul; and bearing conciliatory propositions from Alexander the First, who had succeeded to the imperial dignities of all the Russian empire. Sir Hyde Parker, on receiving this intelligence, immediately returned into anchorage near Copenhagen: a measure which by no means met the approbation of Lord Nelson; who well knew that, in order to negociate with effect, at critical periods, force should always be at hand, and in a situation to act. The British fleets, he conceived, ought to have held a position between the two Russian squadrons; so as to have prevented the possibility of their effecting a junction, should their pacific dispositions prove otherwise than sincere.
On the 5th of May, Sir Hyde Parker having been recalled, Lord Nelson was appointed to be commander in chief; but his health was now so greatly impaired, and his spirits were so much depressed, that he received it with little hope of being able long to enjoy it's advantages. However, not another moment was lost: for, after requiring an explicit declaration that the British trade should not be molested by Sweden, in his absence, nine sail of the line immediately weighed anchor; and proceeded, with his lords.h.i.+p, towards Revel. He wished for farther satisfaction respecting the friendly disposition of the Russians; and thought the best method of putting it to proof, was that of trying how he should be received in one of their ports. On the pa.s.sage, every possible opportunity was embraced for arranging, with the different commanders, plans of conduct to be adopted in the event of either finding the Russians friendly or hostile. There was a sincere desire for peace, but not the smallest dread of war. His lords.h.i.+p, however, no sooner approached the port of Revel, which he had determined to enter, than he learned, to his extreme mortification, that the state of the ice had permitted the escape of the Russian fleet to Cronstadt, on the 10th of May, being three days prior to his arrival. Lord Nelson was disappointed, but not disconcerted. An amicable correspondence was commenced; the governor and forts were saluted; he was permitted to anchor in the outer port; and, an invitation from sh.o.r.e being readily accepted by our hero, he was entertained with the greatest respect and attention by the governor, admiral, and all the Russian officers, at Revel. It appears, however, that the suspicions of some less honourable minds had been excited, on the occasion, to a height of considerable alarm; and, a letter having been received, on the 16th, from the Comte de Pahlen, censuring his lords.h.i.+p for thus visiting the Gulph of Finland, he was resolved immediately to prevent the effect of all malevolent misrepresentations, by returning to join the squadron off Bornholm, where he had left Captain Murray with seven sail of the line.
In a letter to his Excellency Earl Carysfort, dated on board the St.
George, off Gothland, May 19th, 1801, in which his lords.h.i.+p incloses a copy of his correspondence with the Comte de Pahlen, he says--”You will have your opinion, as I have mine, that he never would have wrote such a letter, if the fleet had been at Revel in April. Mine was a desire to mark a particular civility; which, as it was not treated in the way I think handsome, I left Revel on Sunday the 17th, and here I am. From all the Russian officers at Revel, I received the most attentive behaviour; and, I believe, they are as much surprised at the answer as I was. Sir Hyde Parker's letter on the release of the British merchant s.h.i.+ps has not been answered. I hope, all is right: but seamen are but bad negociators; for, we put to issue in five minutes, what diplomatic forms would be five months doing.” He observes that, though he feels sensible all which he sends in this letter is of no consequence; still he knows, from experience, that to be informed there is nothing particular pa.s.sing, is comfortable. ”Our fleet,” he adds, ”is twenty-two sail of the line, and forty-six frigates, bombs, fire-s.h.i.+ps, and gun-vessels; and, in the fleet, not one man in the hospital-s.h.i.+p. A finer fleet,” his lords.h.i.+p exultingly concludes, ”never graced the ocean!” Such, however, was his lords.h.i.+p's ill state of health, that he had, on the day of quitting Revel, written home for permission to relinquish the command, that he might try and re-establish it, by immediately returning to England; being unable, at present, as his lords.h.i.+p stated, to execute the high trust reposed in him, with either comfort to himself, or benefit to the state.
Captain Murray, having been relieved from his station, by a squadron under Rear-Admiral Totty, met Lord Nelson, with four sail of the line, off the north end of Gothland; and, on the 23d, at three in the morning, his lords.h.i.+p joined the rear-admiral off Gothland. He left him, however, the same evening; and, having sent the Ganges, Defence, and Veteran, to water in Kioge Bay, anch.o.r.ed next day off Rostock. His lords.h.i.+p had now not only received letters from the Russian government of an indisputably amicable tendency, but his Imperial Majesty, Alexander the First, with a wisdom and candour which do him the highest honour, absolutely sent Admiral Tchitchagoff for the purpose of holding a confidential communication with the British commander in chief. His lords.h.i.+p, accordingly, in a conference with this brave and worthy Russian admiral, soon became satisfied that the emperor, like his own most gracious sovereign, was sincerely disposed to enter into an amicable arrangement, and they respectively exchanged written doc.u.ments to that effect; thus proving, that two honest and wise seamen are by no means such bad pacific negociators as might be imagined. Nor was this all; for, on the 26th, Lord Nelson received an invitation to visit the Emperor Alexander, in a letter from the Comte de Pahlen, which also apprised his lords.h.i.+p that the British merchant s.h.i.+ps, unjustly detained by his imperial majesty's late predecessor, were now ordered to be liberated.
To this pleasing communication, his lords.h.i.+p instantly returned the following answer, by the Russian lugger which brought his letter from the count.
”St. George, Rostock Bay, 10 o'clock at night, 26th May 1801.
”SIR,
”I am this moment honoured with your excellency's flattering letter of May 6, O.S. and I a.s.sure you, that his imperial majesty's justice has filled the idea I had formed of his excellent heart and head; and, I am sure, the handsome manner in which the embargo has been taken off the British s.h.i.+pping, will give the greatest pleasure to my good and gracious sovereign. I am truly sensible of the great honour done me, by the invitation of his imperial majesty; and, at a future time, I hope to have the pleasure of presenting my humble duty. I have now only to pray that a permanent (which must be honourable) peace, may be re-established between our gracious sovereigns; and, that our august masters reigns may be blessed with every happiness which this world can afford: and I beg that your excellency will believe, that I am, with the highest respect, your most obedient and very humble servant,