The Life of Nelson, Volume 1. Alfred Thayer Mahan
could muster but five hundred men for his Nicaraguan undertaking. Nelson was directed to convoy these with the "Hinchinbrook" to the mouth of the San Juan del Norte, where was the port now commonly called Greytown, in those days a fine and spacious harbor. There his charge ended; but his mental constitution never allowed him to look upon a military task as well done while anything remained to do. In the spirit of his famous saying, fifteen years later, "Were ten ships out of eleven taken, I would never call it well done if the eleventh escaped, if able to get at her," he determined to go with the troops. With his temperament it was impossible to turn his back upon the little body of soldiers, whose toilsome advance up the tropical stream might be aided and hastened by his ready seamen.
The first objective of the expedition was Fort San Juan, a powerful work controlling the river of the same name, and thereby the only natural water transit between the sea and Lake Nicaragua. Upon the possession of this, as a position of vantage and a safe depot for supplies and reinforcements, Dalling based his hopes of future advance, both west and south. Nelson took with him forty-seven seamen and marines from his ship's company; the former, aided by some Indians, doing most of the labor of forcing the boats against the current, through shoal and tortuous channels, under his own constant supervision and encouragement. A small outpost that withstood their progress was by him intrepidly stormed, sword in hand, by sudden assault; and upon reaching Fort San Juan he urgently recommended the same summary method to the officer commanding the troops. The latter, however, was not one of the men who recognize the necessity for exceptional action. Regular approaches, though the slower, were the surer way of reducing a fortified place, and entailed less bloodshed. Professional rule commonly demanded them, and to professional rule he submitted. Nelson argued that through delays, which, however incurred, were now past discussion, the expedition had reached its destination in April, at the end of the healthy, dry season, instead of shortly after its beginning, in January. Consequently, owing to the fall of the water, much additional trouble had been experienced in the advance, the men were proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade; while with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await the return of good weather for further progress.
In military enterprises there will frequently arise the question, Is time or life in this case of the greater value? Those regularly ordered and careful procedures which most economize the blood of the soldier may, by their inevitable delays, seriously imperil the objects of the campaign as a whole; or they may even, while less sanguinary, entail indirectly a greater loss of men than do prompter measures. In such doubtful matters Nelson's judgment was usually sound; and his instinct, which ever inclined to instant and vigorous action, was commonly by itself alone an accurate guide, in a profession whose prizes are bestowed upon quick resolve more often than upon deliberate consultation. The same intuition that in his prime dictated his instant, unhesitating onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of all opportunity for further preparation,—that caused him in the maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, "every hour's delay makes the enemy stronger; we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment,"—that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly more hazardous, but which seized and held the otherwise fleeting chance,—led him here also at San Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press the policy of immediate attack.
The decision was not in his hands, and he was overruled; whereupon, with his usual readiness to do his utmost, he accepted the course he disapproved, and, without nursing a grievance, became at once active in erecting batteries and serving the guns. "When unfortunate contentions," says one dispassionate narrator, "had slackened the ardour for public service, Captain Nelson did not suffer any narrow spirit to influence his conduct. He did more than his duty: where anything was to be done, he saw no difficulties." Great as his merits were, he was never insensible to them; and, in the sketch of his career, furnished by him to his chief biographers, he records his exploits with naïve self-satisfaction, resembling the sententious tablets of Eastern conquerors: "I boarded, if I may be allowed the expression, an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; I made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success." But this simple, almost childlike, delight in his own performances, which continually crops out in his correspondence, did not exaggerate their deserts. Major Polson, commanding the land forces, wrote to Governor Dalling: "I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson. He was the first on every service, whether by day or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer." Dalling, after some delay, wrote in the same sense to the Minister of War in London, warmly recommending Nelson to the notice of the home Government.
While the siege was in progress, Nelson received word of his appointment to a better ship, the "Janus," of forty-four guns, and it became necessary for him to join her. He left Fort San Juan only the day before it surrendered, and returned to Jamaica; but his health now gave way wholly, and his command of the "Janus," for the most part merely nominal, soon came to an end altogether. Dalling had truly said, "Captain Nelson's constitution is rather too delicate for service in this northern ocean."5 Before starting on the expedition, he had himself written to his friend Locker: "If my health is not much better than it is at present, I shall certainly come home after this trip, as all the doctors are against my staying so long in this country. You know my old complaint in my breast: it is turned out to be the gout got there. I have twice been given over since you left this country with that cursed disorder, the gout." In such weakness he lived and worked through a month of a short campaign, in which, of the "Hinchinbrook's" crew of two hundred, one hundred and forty-five were buried in his time or that of his successor, Collingwood,—a mortality which he justly cites as a further proof of the necessity for expedition in such climates. But, though he survived, he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Worn out by dysentery and fatigue, he was carried ashore in his cot, and soon after taken to Sir Peter Parker's house, where Lady Parker herself nursed him through. Her kindness to him and his own debility are touchingly shown by a note written from the mountains, where he was carried in his convalescence: "Oh, Mr. Ross, what would I give to be at Port Royal! Lady Parker not here, and the servants letting me lay as if a log, and take no notice." By September, 1780, it was apparent that perfect restoration, without change of climate, was impossible, and in the autumn, having been somewhat over three years on the station, he sailed for home in the "Lion," of sixty-four guns, Captain Cornwallis,6 to whose careful attention, as formerly to that of Captain Pigot, he gratefully attributed his life. The expedition with which he had been associated ended in failure, for although a part of the force pushed on to Lake Nicaragua, sickness compelled the abandonment of the conquests, which were repossessed by the Spaniards.
Arriving in England, Nelson went to Bath, and there passed through a period of extreme suffering and tedious recovery. "I have been so ill since I have been here," says one of his letters, "that I was obliged to be carried to and from bed, with the most excruciating tortures." Exact dates are wanting; but he seems to have been under treatment near three months, when, on the 28th of January, 1781, he wrote to Locker, in his often uncouth style: "Although I have not quite recovered the use of my limbs, yet my inside is a new man;" and again, three weeks later, "I have now the perfect use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers' ends are as if half dead." He remained in Bath until the middle of March, latterly more for the mild climate than because feeling the necessity of prosecuting his cure; yet that his health was far from securely re-established is evident, for a severe relapse followed his return to London. On the 7th of May, 1781, he writes to his brother: "You will say, why does not he come into Norfolk? I will tell you: I have entirely lost the use of my left arm, and very near of my left leg and thigh." In estimating Nelson's heroism, the sickly fragility of his bodily frame must be kept in memory; not to excuse shortcomings of nerve or enterprise, for there were none, but to exalt duly the extraordinary mental energy which rather mocked at difficulties than triumphed over them.
While yet an invalid he had again applied for employment, and, as the war was still raging, was appointed in August, 1781, to the
The Caribbean was formerly thus styled in contradistinction to the South Sea, the Pacific, which was so called because its first discoverers saw it to the south from the Isthmus.
Cornwallis was an officer of marked gallantry and conduct, who distinguished himself on several occasions, as captain, during the War of 1778, and as admiral during the wars of the French Revolution. He was brother to Lord Cornwallis, who surrendered at Yorktown, in 1781.