driven her enemies from every island in the West Indies, with the one exception of Guadeloupe, and in the previous October Admiral Duncan had inflicted a shattering defeat on the Dutch Fleet at Camperdown. This had proved more than a great naval victory, for the French had been using the Dutch Fleet to convoy a large body of troops to the Clyde, on the somewhat dubious assumption that an enemy landing there would force the British Government to withdraw troops from Ireland and thus enable the Irish malcontents to launch a successful rebellion.
For several years past the French had been sending agents to stir up trouble in Ireland. They had met with such a fervent response from the discontented elements there that the Directory had promised to send ten thousand troops to act asa spearhead of rebellion against the hated British. Had this force succeeded in landing, it might well have proved impossible for Britain, with her other commitments, to hold the sister island, in which case it would have become the base for a great French Army able to invade at will England, Scotland or Wales.
Even as things stood, the League of United Irishmen was thirty thousand strong and pledged, with or without French help, to rise and fight to the death for Irish independence at the signal of its leader, Wolfe Tone. So at any time unhappy Britain might find a bloody civil war forced upon her as a further drain on her desperately stretched resources.
Outside the Mediterranean the British Navy had proved more than a match for the combined Fleets of France and Spain. Just on a year before, Admiral Sir John Jervis, now Earl St. Vincent, had so thoroughly defeated the Spanish Fleet, off the Cape from which he had taken his title, that only a small remnant of it now remained. Great seaman as he was, he had also had the greatness of mind to give a large part of the credit for his victory to Commodore Nelson who, on his own initiative, had broken station to cut through the Spanish line of battle, thus throwing the enemy Fleet into confusion.
Later that year this dashing junior officer had shown exceptional skill and gallantry in a series of attacks on the harbour of Cadiz. Then in July St. Vincent had given him command of a Squadron detached for the purpose of capturing the island of Tenerife. In that Nelsonâs luck had failed him. The Military Commanders in Gibraltar and the Channel Isles both had considerable bodies of idle troops under their orders, but both refused to lend any part of them to St. Vincent for this expedition. On account of lack of troops Nelson had not sufficient men to land forces which could have surrounded the town and had to rely on his limited number of marines and his âtarsâ to take it by direct assault.
On the night of July 22nd, when he launched his attack, many of the boats, owing to dense fog, failed to reach their landing points and others were driven off. Refusing to acknowledge defeat, Nelson decided to lead a second assault inperson two nights later. The first attack had alerted the Spanish garrison and they were ready for him. It soon transpired, too, that the troops who garrisoned the Spanish colonies were of far finer mettle than those of their home Army.
Before Nelson even got ashore his right arm was shot away above the elbow by a cannon ball. But his men, most gallantly led by officers some of whom were later to become that famous âBand of Brothersâ, his Captains, fought their way into the city and held a part of it for several hours. Their position was, however, so evidently untenable that the seriously wounded Commodore agreed with the chivalrous Spanish Governor to a cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners.
In spite of this defeat, there was something about Nelson that had already caused the British people to take him, although still a comparatively junior Commander, to their hearts; and on his return to England in September they had hailed him as a hero. Throughout the autumn his