NILE 1798 Nelson's first great victory ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR GREGORY FREMONT-BARNES holds a doctorate in Modern History from Oxford University and serves as a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, dividing his time between teaching cadets on-site and commissioned officers of the British Army posted to garrisons throughout the UK and abroad. His wider work for the Ministry of Defence has taken him to Iraq, Afghanistan and both republics of the Congo. He has written extensively, with his principal naval works including: Trafalgar 1805, Nelson's Sailors, Nelson's Officers and Midshipmen, The Royal Navy, 1793-1815, Victory vs Red ou table: Ships of the Line at Trafalgar 1805 and The Wars of the Barbary Pirates. HOWARD GERRARD studied at the Wallasey School of Art and has been a freelance designer and illustrator for over 20 years. He has worked for a number of publishers and is an associate member of the Guild of Aviation Artists. He has won both the Society of British Aerospace Companies Award and the Wilkinson Sword Trophy and has illustrated a number of books for Osprey. CAMPAIGN • 230 NILE 1798 Nelson's first great victory GREGORY FREMONT-BARNES ILLUSTRATED BY H GERRARD Series editor Marcus Cowper First published in 2011 by Osprey Publishing EDITOR'S NOTE Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford 0X2 OPH, UK Cover image courtesy of the National Maritime Museum. 44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA E-mail: [email protected] ARTIST'S NOTE Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the © 2011 Osprey Publishing Limited colour plates in this book were prepared are available for private sale. The Publishers retain all reproduction copyright whatsoever. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private All enquiries should be addressed to: study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form Howard Gerrard or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, 11 Oaks Road photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers. Tenterden TN30 6RD ISBN: 978 1 84603 580 7 United Kingdom E-book ISBN: 978 1 84908 304 1 The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence upon this matter. Editorial by llios Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK (www.iliospublishing.com) Design: The Black Spot Index by Alison Worthington Typeset in Sabon and Myriad Pro THE WOODLAND TRUST 3D bird's-eye views by Ian Palmer Battlescene illustrations by Osprey Publishing are supporting the Woodland Trust, the UK's leading Originated by PDQ Media woodland conservation charity, by funding the dedication of trees. Cartography: Bounford.com Printed in China through Worldprint 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. www.ospreypublishing.com CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 CHRONOLOGY 10 OPPOSING COMMANDERS 13 British commanders - French commanders OPPOSING FORCES 18 The British squadron . The French squadron - Orders of battle OPPOSING PLANS 24 French plans . British plans THE CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE 29 Cat and mouse . French arrival in Egypt and the continuing British search British approach and French reaction . Action commences Crescendo of battle . The final phase AFTERMATH 81 Tactical analysis THE BATTLEFIELD TODAY 90 GLOSSARY OF NAVAL TERMS 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING 94 INDEX 95 INTRODUCTION The battle of the Nile ranks as one of the most decisive engagements in naval history. The action not only stranded the young general Napoleon Bonaparte and his army in Egypt; it thrust Horatio Nelson forward as a brilliant naval tactician, with the coming victories at Copenhagen and, above all, Trafalgar, confirming him as history's pre-eminent naval commander. Furthermore, it encouraged resistance to Revolutionary France, bringing into being a powerful coalition including Britain, Austria, Russia, Turkey, Naples and other powers. Finally, victory at the Nile restored the Royal Navy's ascendancy in the Mediterranean - a grave strategic setback for the recent Franco-Spanish alliance, which had until then denied Britain her century-old strong naval presence east of Gibraltar. The battle of the Nile compounded the effect of Britain's previous successes - notably at Camperdown and St Vincent, fought the year before - by setting for the Royal Navy a standard for fighting prowess that continued well beyond the era of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The battle of the Glorious First of June, fought off Ushant in 1794, was the first fleet action of the French Revolutionary Wars. Earl Howe, with a fleet of 25 ships of the line sought to prevent an immense French grain convoy from reaching home port. In this Howe failed, though the British claim victory on the strength of the six ships of the line they captured and one sunk. (Author's collection) 5 Nelson's triumph formed a line of departure from all previous major naval encounters of the 18th century - indeed, of virtually any era - constituting as it did a battle of annihilation: a truly decisive victory resulting in the loss of nearly every ship in the opposing force. In the age of fighting sail no precedent existed for an action in which two forces of approximately equal size ended with such a disproportionate result. In all respects - leadership, discipline, gunnery, training, organization and morale - the British demonstrated a marked superiority against an opponent undoubted for its fighting spirit, but seriously lacking in tactical imagination, adequate training and initiative. Beginning in 1792 Europe was convulsed by war. Austria, Prussia, many of the smaller German states, Spain, Holland and other powers sought to force the French revolutionary genie back in its bottle, restore the Bourbon monarchy to the French throne and turn back the tide of radicalism that the French republic had carried across its frontiers - thanks in part to the sheer size and number of its newly raised conscript armies - threatening the whole political and social stability of Western and Central Europe. By 1798 the struggle that had begun between Britain and Revolutionary France five years earlier had reached a stalemate of predictable geographical limits: Britain stood supreme at sea - thanks to successes in 1797 at St Vincent against the Spanish and at Camperdown against the Dutch - while France boasted unchallenged mastery on land, the same year proving decisive as the occasion for the young Napoleon Bonaparte's stunning victory over the Austrians at Rivoli in northern Italy and the subsequent imposition upon them of the punitive Treaty of Campo Formio. With this humiliating settlement came the fall of Britain's last great continental ally - Prussia and Spain having left the First Coalition by the Treaty of Basel in 1795 - by which Austria ceded much of northern Italy and the Dalmatian coast to French control and acknowledged as a fait accompli the republic's occupation of the Rhineland and the Low Countries. French power and influence extended still further with the acquisition of Corfu, the creation soon thereafter of a Roman republic in central Italy and the exaction of millions of gold ducats in reparations from the Pope and several northern Italian states. Capitalizing on these conquests, and unhindered by further opposition from Vienna, the French invaded defenceless Switzerland, establishing a satellite state which the revolutionaries dubbed the Helvetic Republic - applying the name given by Imperial Rome and thus confirming the French desire for conquest on a grand scale. In short, the events of 1797-98 offered irrefutable proof that, far from benignly offering fraternal protection and liberation from the yoke of monarchical tyranny, which their propaganda had selflessly promised since 1792, the French revolutionaries confirmed what most contemporaries had long since feared; the war machine created for the defence of the republic had now become an instrument of shameless conquest, with France bent on territorial aggrandizement at the expense of adversaries and neutrals alike. Relentless campaigning, conscription and the recasting of the Army based on merit rather than privilege had meanwhile paid dividends; by 1798 French occupied territories stretched from the Low Countries to the Rhineland, and from Switzerland down the Italian peninsula. After Campo Formio only Britain - reeling from a financial crisis, rocked by two major naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, and forced to withdraw her fleet from the Mediterranean as a consequence of a recent Franco-Spanish alliance - stood in any position, albeit a very weak one, to oppose French expansion. Under these circumstances Britain unsurprisingly opened peace talks with France at Lille, but with no result; in truth, Bonaparte secured Egypt apart from possessing most of the French and Dutch colonies in the West through the application of force on land, but Nelson's Indies - certainly lucrative, though not indispensable, to the French economy application of sea power - Britain could bring little to the bargaining table. Under such advantageous made it impossible to retain - circumstances Bonaparte, the hero of the Italian campaign, returned to Paris a perfect example of the in December 1797 and received command of an army stationed along the profound influence that naval Channel coast designated for the invasion of England. There could be no operations can exert on their land-based counterparts. question but that France, albeit experiencing a financial crisis of her own and (Author's collection) still struggling to recover from the period of political instability that marked Robespierre's Terror in 1793-94, stood in the ascendant. In the ascendant, certainly, but only on land; crossing the English Channel was no mean feat in light of British naval dominance. As such, the prospect of a successful strike across the Channel had shifted in 1797 from merely problematic to downright remote as the next year dawned. In early 1798 Bonaparte, faced with this strategic deadlock and keen for a distant command to avoid the turmoil in Paris - indeed, the Directory, wary of his widespread popularity within the Army, stood just as anxious to be rid of his potentially dangerous presence - conducted an inspection of the camps around Boulogne, the staging ground for the optimistically named Armee de l'Angleterre. Bonaparte reckoned he could do much with this fine instrument - but much farther afield than the south coast of England. Egypt satisfied many needs at once: it strongly appealed to his sense of romantic adventure, for little was known of the region in Europe and he could do more than merely conquer this land of mystery and ancient culture - he could enlighten its people. There lay at once the opportunity for French scholars to study the archaeology and natural history of one of the cradles of civilization, while at the same time introduce Western ideas of liberalism and the modern social and political institutions of which most Frenchmen were proud. In addition, a team of scientists, mathematicians, botanists and other scholars accompanying the 7 LEFT expedition could confirm their country's justifiable reputation for rapidly The Paris National Guard expanding mankind's understanding of the world in the continuing tradition marches off to join the Army of Enlightenment thought. If naked conquest and commercial and strategic at the front in 1793. Having advantage underpinned the primary French motives for the conquest of Egypt, executed or driven into exile its aristocratically dominated officer at the very least their later discovery of the Rosetta Stone, with its inscriptions corps, the French government in Greek, Demotic and Hieroglyphs - which would eventually enable scholars sought to compensate for this to translate many of the texts of the ancient world - confirmed France as loss by raising vast numbers Europe's leader in scientific scholarship. of recruits, appealing to the patriotic instincts of potential The idea of invading Egypt was not new; it had originated during the reign volunteers and establishing of Louis XV in the mid-18th century, but the notion remained dormant until a meritocratic system of resurrected by Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, who in July 1797 promotion - expedients that presented a lecture on the subject to the Institut de France, followed by together succeeded first in holding at bay and, later, correspondence exchanged with Bonaparte while that commander still defeating the armies of the remained at the Italian front. The scheme appealed to the young and ambitious First Coalition (1792-97). general, not merely on the grounds of adventure and cultural advancement, (Author's collection) but also at the prospect of funding the expedition by seizing en route to Egypt the vast wealth held by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, an ancient order RIGHT Fighting around Charleroi, June dating from the time of the Crusades, which had ruled Malta since the early 1794. Having held back the 16th century. Bonaparte deemed the Knights - who were known to be corrupt invading Austrian and Prussian and unpopular and who numbered fewer than a thousand men - incapable of armies in 1792, the French mounting an adequate defence; in short, Malta was ripe for the picking. revolutionaries went on the offensive, invading the Austrian The island's prominent place in Bonaparte's strategy for conquering Egypt Netherlands (Belgium) and lay beyond its mere wealth; situated in a prime position in the central Holland with armies consisting Mediterranean, with Valetta one of the world's great deep-water ports, of a few veterans but mostly French occupation would extend the republic's naval dominance in the comprising a torrent of eager young men raised via the levee Mediterranean still further at a time when the Royal Navy maintained no en masse, the first instance of meaningful presence beyond Gibraltar. With the French not only ensconced universal conscription in Europe. at their great port at Toulon - and across much of Italy, at Corfu and along Partly on the basis of numerical the Dalmatian coast thanks to Campo Formio - the occupation of Malta superiority, by the time of the Nile campaign France controlled could extend their power farther east with virtual impunity. To this end, most of Western Europe, Talleyrand reinforced the argument for a descent on Egypt in February 1798, including the Low Countries, when in a report to the government he outlined the particular commercial the west bank of the Rhine, and strategic advantages of such a campaign, its relatively low cost and the Switzerland and northern and central Italy. (Author's collection) benefits to be derived from establishing a colony that could compensate 8