Breaking the Line by David Donachie Read Free Book Online Page B

if nothing had happened, unmolested, and the King would ensure they remained so; in return they would swear once more to uphold the monarchy and abide by the laws of an autocratic state. Or they could take ship into exile, carrying with them all their portable property.
    Nelson argued for several hours through Sir William, but he let the Ambassador point out the flaws in Ruffo’s proposals: that Ferdinand would never agree to it, that Nelson, his representative could not approve it, and that the only reason the rebels were surrendering was because they lacked the force, without a French garrison, to do anything else. When Sir William tired, Emma took over, but there was no shifting the priest: his honour and word were pledged, and his principles of forgiveness invoked.
    The way Ruffo talked it seemed as if the rebels were merely errant children instead of treacherous opportunists. He could not grasp that if they had taken the King and Queen they would probably have executed them, along with their grown-up children. Nelson preferred not to think about the infant child of the Hereditary Prince. No sensible sovereign, let alone a half-mad one, could live with such a threat hanging over his head.
    ‘Tell the cardinal,’ said an exasperated Nelson for the tenth time, ‘that a few lopped-off heads will solve the business much quicker than all the overtures he makes.’
    But Ruffo argued on, forcing Nelson to accept that the matter should be passed back to the King and his council to decide, and obliging him to accept that the truce was valid.
    ‘I know his game,’ Nelson opined, as the cardinal was seen into his barge. ‘He hopes for a fait accompli.’
    ‘Who is to say, Nelson,’ said a restored Sir William, ‘that he does not know his sovereign better than you or I?’
     
    As expected Ruffo’s amnesty was repudiated by the King, which put those who had accepted it in an impossible bind. The forts were no longer fully manned, for a goodly number of the defenders had sneaked out to their own homes. Faced with Ruffo’s army and Nelson’s fleet, those left had no option but to surrender. What followed was the full bloody revenge of the counter-revolution that Ferdinand had prophesied. Men who thought they had surrendered with the honours of war were imprisoned in disease-filled hulks or inthe dank, rat infested dungeons of the fortresses they had so recently controlled.
     
    The news arrived that Earl St Vincent had gone home through ill health, to be replaced by Lord Keith. The first despatch from his new commanding officer indicated to Nelson that the trust he had enjoyed until now, and the right to make his own dispositions, might be under review. Nelson could not be sure if strategic concerns or a desire to put in place an over-mighty subordinate prompted his new superior’s views. All he knew was that they were wrong.
    With the French in the toe of Italy, albeit tenuously, and Bonaparte still in Egypt, Nelson was sure the fulcrum of Mediterranean control still lay around the Straits of Messina and the seas between the African coast and the toe of Italy. Keith disagreed, and insisted it was necessary to subdue Malta. Nelson met that with a request for troops to carry out the task, it could not be done otherwise. Then Keith worried that the two ships that had escaped the Nile battle, Le Généraux and Guillaume Tell, which Nelson dearly longed to take, posed a threat out of all proportion to their strength, therefore Toulon must be blockaded. The notion that they might combine with the fleets of Spain and the French fleet supposedly making its way from Brest terrified Keith. Nelson was more sanguine, for he had met them and beaten them. Let them put to sea, was his opinion, because it was only there that they could be destroyed. He had arranged his fleet in Naples Bay to do two things: first to form a defence that no attacking fleet could breach, and second to lock in the still rebellious subjects of King Ferdinand.