Nelson: the unhappy admiral

History Extra

Heinrich Fuger’s oil on canvas portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson, who lost his life at Trafalgar just as he was discovering the contentment that had always eluded him. (Royal Naval Museum/Bridgeman Art Library)

In 18 hours of fury on 2 and 3 August 1798, a British fleet performed an almost unprecedented feat of arms in Aboukir Bay in Egypt. It virtually annihilated a major French fleet, destroying or capturing 11 of 13 warships of the line. In one sensational stroke, Britain established naval supremacy in the Mediterranean, sealed the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte’s expeditionary force to Egypt and heartened a Europe demoralised by the apparently unstoppable vigour of revolutionary France. 

 

Within months of ‘the battle of the Nile’, Turkey, Russia and Austria had joined Britain in a new coalition against the French. The European world changed. Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who had proved as relentless as a guided missile while hunting the French fleet to its death, was an international hero. As Lavinia Spencer, the wife of the first lord of the Admiralty, wrote him: “Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, immortalised Nelson!”

 

It was what the admiral had always wanted, superabundant patriotic military glory. Indeed, it was this constant hunger for exaltation that had given him the edge over other talented naval officers of the day, alerting him to every opportunity for distinction. 

 

But, although his spectacular climb now accelerated, the victory in Aboukir Bay did not herald a period of contented fulfilment. Far from it, Nelson was soon plunged into a deep personal crisis that forced him to reappraise his goals and ultimate aspirations. He began “thinking and hoping for happiness”. In part it was the mid-life crisis of a man of indifferent health turning 40 and feeling his mortality, but it was also the product of a serious disenchantment with his lot, and a realisation that he had “never known happiness beyond moments”. Fame had not been enough. 

 

Some writers have asserted that this led the admiral to court his own death at Trafalgar. Closer study throws cold sea water on that suggestion.

 

Measure of success

 

Even before Jeremy Bentham popularised ‘happiness’ as a defining measure of success, Nelson held it to be the indispensable hallmark of good government and personal fulfilment. When a grateful Ferdinand IV of Naples awarded him the Duchy of Bronte in Sicily in1799, he was clear about his priorities. He said: “My object at Bronte is to make the people happy by not suffering them to be oppressed, [and] to enrich the country by the improvement in agriculture.” His people would be “the happiest in all His Sicilian Majesty’s dominions” and the Duchy “Bronte the Happy”. It was natural, therefore, that he sought for himself what he so readily conceded a necessity for others.

 

Nelson based himself in Naples and Sicily for the two years following the battle of the Nile, and fell passionately in love with Emma, the wife of Britain’s ageing minister at Naples, Sir William Hamilton. Hamilton accepted the ménage in which he frequently seemed to be the surplus partner, but Nelson’s disquiet was rooted in apprehensions about returning to his wife, Frances, in England, especially after Emma conceived his only child in 1800. 

 

^{Heinrich Fuger’s oil on canvas portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson, who lost his life at Trafalgar just as he was discovering the contentment that had always eluded him. (Royal Naval Museum/Bridgeman Art Library)}

 

There were other aggravations, too. Always hyper-sensitive and hungry for reassurance and affection, Nelson reacted badly to criticism, especially suggestions that he was devoting too much attention to the twin kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and idling in Palermo when he was needed elsewhere. 

 

When the Admiralty appointed a rival, Admiral Lord Keith, to the vacant post of commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean in 1799, Nelson saw it as a direct reflection upon his professional conduct. He returned to England in 1800 nursing a miscellaneous collection of grievances, including what he considered to have been the shabby treatment of some of his officers and the Admiralty’s inability to find one of his brothers more gainful employment than clerking in the Navy Office.

 

He had also been disappointed at the government’s parsimonious reaction to his victory. A barony had placed him on the lowest rung of the peerage with an annual pension of £2,000. Although the East India Company had granted him £10,000, he had reason for complaint in view of the fact that Admirals Earl St Vincent and Viscount Duncan had received more handsome peerages for much lesser victories and half as much again in annuities. The hero returned to his native land feeling distinctly ill-used.

 

Things did not improve. In London Nelson separated from his wife, but was damaged by the public gossip, and furious that his mistress was shunned by the court. Money also became a serious problem. Respectable members of the ‘middling’ classes, with a few influential connections, the Nelsons were nevertheless relatively poor. In an age when property was almost indispensable to ‘gentility’, Nelson’s father, a Norfolk clergyman, was merely a life-tenant of the rectory at Burnham Thorpe, and had few bankable assets. Nelson’s naval successes earned a coat-of-arms and a peerage, but these merely elevated him into a social position he had no means of adequately supporting. “I am called upon, being thought very rich, for everything,” he said, “beyond any possibility of my keeping pace with my rank and station.”  

 

After 1801 these perplexities increased, for he not only found himself being dunned by members of the Nelson tribe, but also had to provide for two homes, his estranged wife’s, and another he hoped to share with his mistress and child. Emma had no money of her own, and Sir William was busy selling his famous collection of antiques and art treasures to clear debts. Nelson was not by nature mercenary, but in these circumstances he was sensitive to anything that blighted his ability to turn his naval services to pecuniary account.         

 

Sicily versus Merton

 

Unwilling to surrender the bliss he had found with Emma, but in need of money as well as further naval glory, Nelson was torn between home and duty. At home he clamoured to return to sea; at sea he canvassed for leave. 

 

Two short campaigns in 1801 only increased Nelson’s dissatisfaction. He resented serving as second to Sir Hyde Parker in the Baltic, where Nelson masterminded a flawless campaign and won a hard battle at Copenhagen, while the other received the pay and emoluments of a commander-in-chief.

 

In both campaigns he feuded with the ‘set of beasts’ at the Admiralty, and complained that deserved rewards were withheld from his men, and that he was unreasonably kept in service when he needed to go home. In that year and the next he also tried to pull political strings to get positions for members of his family, but his slavish support for Henry Addington’s weak administration in the House of Lords was largely futile and only enhanced his scepticism.

    

Nelson felt betrayed, powerless to raise the standing of his family and protect his friends and followers, many of whom had risked their lives in the state’s service. He believed that he was being used by an establishment that resented his success, and allowed him as meagre a return as possible. 

 

All of this contrasted with the two years he had spent in Italy. There, a more permissive society had seen nothing untoward about the ménage. Nelson had been extravagantly feted by their Sicilian Majesties, and his influence had been such that he amusingly referred to himself as a ‘secretary of state’. The dukedom, among other gifts that Ferdinand had bestowed, outshone the cautious decorations of the British. “Those were happy times,” Nelson wrote to Emma. “Would to God we were at this moment in the Bay of Naples.”

 

In 1801 Nelson made a bold decision. As a general peace looked imminent, he would quit his native land and retire to Bronte, where he felt valued at his true worth, and could live with his mistress and daughter without shame or ridicule. “I am fixed as to the plan of life I mean to pursue,” he told Emma. “It is to take a small neat house, six to 10 miles from London, and there to remain till I can fix for ever or get to Bronte. I have never known happiness beyond moments, and I am fixed as Fate to try if I cannot obtain it after so many years of labour and anxiety.” He was sure that Italy was “the only country” in which he could be “completely happy”.

 

^{Nelson’s daughter, Horatia, shown in a c1806 portrait. The gardens in the background may be those at Merton Place. (National Maritime Museum)}
 

The dream of Bronte sustained Nelson for almost three years. “Under the shade of a chestnut tree at Bronte, where the din of war will not reach my ears, do I hope to solace myself, make my people happy and prosperous, and, by giving advice… enable His Sicilian Majesty, my benefactor, to be more than ever respected in the Mediterranean.”

 

While enjoying the reputation of a benevolent landlord, he could also make himself useful by using his name to assist his adopted land, for example by brokering peace between Naples and the Barbary States.

 

What, then, deflected Nelson from this course, and reconciled him to a life in England? One reason was Merton Place. While his managers in Sicily wrestled with the task of preparing Bronte for permanent occupation, Nelson purchased a dilapidated estate in Merton, Surrey. The transformation of this house, where Nelson lived as and with whom he pleased during the Peace of Amiens (a hiatus in the war with France, from 1802–03), changed his life.  

 

In four years its extent was tripled to 166 acres. The house was enlarged and improved, and the grounds beautified, with a new lodge and driveway, a kitchen garden and working farm, and spacious pleasure grounds. “The alterations and improvements are far beyond anything I could have supposed,” testified one visitor. “When finished it will be a delightful spot.” Nelson, lionised by the locals, felt himself emerging from darkness into a ‘paradise’. According to Emma, they were “as happy as kings, and much more so.” 

 

When Nelson returned to sea at the outbreak of a new war in 1803, he was a calmer man, secure in the well-being of his domestic life, and able to fully concentrate on his task as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean.

 

For a while Merton and Bronte competed as possible retreats, but whereas Merton’s attractions multiplied, clouds gathered over Bronte. Returning to his old station, Nelson found Italy changed. “Nobody cares for us there,” he lamented. Furthermore, Bronte was struggling to clear its debts, and the political outlook for Naples and Sicily looked bleak, with Napoleon poised to reduce them to subservience. By summer 1805, Nelson was sure that Merton, not Bronte, was where his pilgrimage would end. 

 

^{An early 19th-century sketch of Nelson’s villa at Merton in Surrey, where he “left all which I hold dear in this world to go to serve my king and country”. (National Maritime Museum)}

 

Family man

 

The idea that Nelson went to Trafalgar ready to die shows little insight into his situation during his final few years. In fact, his affairs had seldom looked brighter. Merton was blooming, and the admiral had brought both Emma and his daughter, Horatia, under its roof. Nelson’s professional standing was also at its height, and new government ministers were routinely conferring with him about the safety of the realm, much as their Sicilian Majesties had once done.  

 

Even the admiral’s finances looked happier. A long-running lawsuit against Earl St Vincent for a share of prize money taken in 1799 had yielded several thousand pounds, and by the end of 1804 Bronte had begun at last to produce an annuity of £2,800. What’s more, a national effort had equipped Nelson with a force sufficient to engage the combined Franco-Spanish fleet when it left Cadiz, creating the opportunity for him to write a glorious finale to his career and win enough prize money to secure his future.   

 

Nelson left England in September 1805 with a clear plan. “I hope very soon to finish with the French fleet and return to England and dear Merton, which I think the prettiest place in the world,” he said. 

 

Only one more battle seemed to stand between Nelson and that golden future of his dreams. “Friday night,” he famously wrote the day he left home for the last time, “at half past 10 drove from dear, dear Merton, where I left all which I hold dear in this world to go to serve my king and country. May the great God whom I adore enable me to fill the expectations of my country, and if it is His good pleasure that I should return, my thanks will never cease being offered up to the throne of his mercy.”

 

But, of course, Nelson did not survive Trafalgar, and that future was poignantly snatched away by a sniper’s bullet fired from the mizzen top of the French Redoutable. In a final conflict, Horatio Nelson fulfilled his professional ambition to achieve the ultimate victory, but tragically lost his personal goal. “Poor man,” said a midshipman who knew him. “How he wished so much to see England again.”  

 

Dr John Sugden’s books include Nelson: A Dream of Glory, which was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The concluding volume, Nelson: The Sword of Albion, is published by Bodley Head.

What killed Napoleon Bonaparte?

History Extra

Napoleon Bonaparte on his deathbed. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

 

“My death is premature. I have been assassinated by the English oligopoly and their hired murderer.” 

 

These were the spiteful words of Napoleon Bonaparte when he dictated his last will and testament in April 1821. One of history’s most accomplished manipulators, Napoleon was a man who took his vendettas to the grave. The day after his death in British custody (on 5 May), 16 observers attended the autopsy, seven doctors among them. They were unanimous in their conclusion: Napoleon had died of stomach cancer. Nevertheless, the doubts Napoleon had fomented about what ‘really’ happened have never quite gone away: did the British government hasten his death? Did French rivals slip poison into his wine? Was it even Napoleon who died in Longwood House in May 1821? For nearly two centuries, all these questions and more have been discussed, disputed and recycled. 

 

Born to a Corsican family of modest means in 1769, by 1811 Napoleon Bonaparte ruled 70 million people and dominated Europe. Four years later, his dynastic, political, imperial and military dreams were shattered and he was exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena under British guard. There, until his death he and his cooped-up, fretful household lived in a rambling villa called Longwood House.

 

A slow death

 

That death did not come suddenly. For months Napoleon suffered from abdominal pain, nausea, night sweats and fever. When he was not constipated he was assailed by diarrhea; he lost weight. He complained of headaches, weak legs and discomfort in bright light. His speech became slurred. The night sweats left him drenched. His gums, lips and nails were colourless. Briefly, he got it into his head that he was being poisoned, but then he decided he had the same cancer that had killed his father, and that all medical help was useless. On 4 May 1821, he lost consciousness. On 5 May, news went out to a shocked world that the great man was dead – and the questions began.

 

^{A priest and a group of officers gather round Napoleon’s coffin. (General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

The first conspiracy theorist was the Irish doctor Barry O’Meara, who had been ship’s surgeon on HMS Bellerophon when Napoleon surrendered to her captain after Waterloo, and became Napoleon’s personal physician. O’Meara tended the ex-emperor for three years, until he made the bombshell claim that the British governor of St Helena, Sir Hudson Lowe, had commanded him to “shorten Napoleon’s life”. He was, unsurprisingly, sacked. 

 

Sir Hudson was eminently well-cast as a sneering British villain, which is the version that has come down through history and, not by coincidence, the version that Napoleon wanted the world to believe. Napoleon had a cunning plan to escape St Helena by claiming its unhealthy climate was fatally weakening him, and using Dr O’Meara’s medical authority in support. O’Meara fell for his patient’s famous charm and obediently backed up his claims: in 1818, he accused Governor Lowe of attempting to hasten Napoleon’s death, and in 1822, he published a book claiming the British government had been determined to eliminate all possibility of another Napoleonic comeback.

 

Many people suspected O’Meara was right, but nobody could prove it. No method yet existed to prove the presence of arsenic in a corpse, and Napoleon’s was, in any case, buried in four coffins and under a large slab of rock. If Napoleon had been murdered, it looked as if the killer had got away with it – until, that was, a pipe-smoking Swedish dentist came across the story some 100 years later and took up where O’Meara had left off.  

 

Investigations 

 

When the private papers of Napoleon’s valet de chambre were published in the 1950s, offering intimate accounts of the emperor’s final days, Dr Sten Forshufvud believed he had spotted a smoking gun. Of 31 symptoms of arsenic poisoning discovered by scientists since 1821, Napoleon presented 28, so Forshufvud asked a Scottish university to conduct a newly-invented arsenic-detection test. Neutron activation analysis (NAA) was carried out on hairs from Napoleon’s head dated to 1816, 1817 and 1818 – he was a prodigious gifter of locks – and revealed fatally high levels of arsenic in his system. O’Meara, it seemed, had been right: Napoleon had been murdered – but by whom? 

 

Canadian bodybuilding millionaire Ben Weider (discoverer of the young Schwarzenegger) was arriving at the same conclusion by means of a different method. Convinced that Napoleon had been ‘done in’, Weider had combed the many memoirs written by members of the Longwood household for clues. When he and Dr Forshufvud collated evidence of the symptoms described in the memoirs and compared them with the peaks and troughs of arsenic absorption displayed by the NAA analysis, they believed they had evidence of doses administered at intervals over several years. Their uncompromisingly-titled book Assassination at St Helena also named a new suspect: Napoleon’s old companion Charles Tristan, marquis de Montholon, a shady character whose wife Napoleon had seduced, who was desperate to get off the island and who stood to gain personally from the will. The restored Bourbon kings of France (who had as much interest as the British in keeping Napoleon down) had (they claimed) threatened to make Montholon’s embezzlement of military funds public if he did not agree to slip Napoleon an arsenical Mickey Finn [a laced drink]. 

 

The arsenic debate

 

This colourful theory did not convince everyone, however: even if arsenic had killed Napoleon, this did not mean someone had killed Napoleon with arsenic. In the 1980s the poisoning debate veered in a different direction, theorising that Napoleon could simply have absorbed enough arsenic from his environment to kill him off. A 19th-century house was saturated in arsenic: cosmetics, hair tonic, cigarettes, sealing wax, cooking pots, insect-repellent powders, rat poison, cake icing – all were toxic. 

 

When a Newcastle University chemist experimented on a scrap of Longwood wallpaper stolen by a 19th-century tourist, he discovered poisonous gases exhaled by a mould growing behind it could even have contributed to napoleon’s fatal decline. Later researchers tested hairs from Napoleon’s son; his first wife, the Empress Josephine; and 10 living persons, and concluded that Europeans in the early 19th century had up to 100 times more arsenic in their bodies than the average person living now. Inanimate guilty parties suddenly swarmed the crime scene. 

 

The ‘murder school’ was having none of it. For several years, the two schools of thought slugged it out with tests and counter-tests: the FBI, Scotland Yard, the Strasbourg Forensic Institute, the laboratories of the Paris police – all carried out tests, and all confirmed that high levels of arsenic had been present in Napoleon’s system, but still no one could definitely answer the question of how the poison had got there. 

 

^{A French print depicting Napoleon's funeral cortege on St Helena. (Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)}

 

The substitution theory

 

Meanwhile, a second debate rumbled away in the background: substitution. The idea of the substitute emperor has been used in films and novels and certainly, Napoleon’s more besotted admirers were (and are) sure that he lived on – and that the man who died on 5 May was someone else. 

 

The most startling version of the substitution theories claims that Napoleon never went to St Helena at all: that a double was dispatched in his place while the ex-emperor retired to Verona and peaceably sold spectacles, until he was shot attempting to scale the walls of an Austrian palace to see his young son. Sadly, the tale has no documentary basis whatsoever. 

 

A second substitution theory revolves around Jean-Baptiste Cipriani, butler at Longwood until his death in February 1818 during a hepatitis epidemic, and buried nearby. The ‘Cipriani school’ claims that the British secretly dug up Napoleon’s body in the late 1820s for inexplicable reasons of their own. When faced with a French request in 1840 to disinter Napoleon and bring him back to Paris, the British therefore hurriedly dug Cipriani up and dropped him into Napoleon’s empty tomb. Why, the ‘Cipriani school’ has demanded, did the British officer in charge allow the French observers present to see the body only at midnight, by torchlight? Why would he not allow sketches to be made? Why was the coffin only opened for two minutes before it was shut up again and taken aboard the French frigate? 

 

Fake death masks, rotting socks, disappearing facial scars, the position of viscera-holding vases – the details claimed and denied are too many to go into here, but kept Napoleonic studies happy for years. In 1969, the bicentenary of Napoleon’s birth, a French journalist even published a deliberately sensational ‘appeal’ to the British: Anglais, rendez-nous Napoleon! (Give us back Napoleon!) His startling contention was that the British royal family had had Napoleon reburied in Westminster Abbey, the ultimate insult. 

 

The more prosaic truth is that Napoleon’s body (almost) certainly lies under the dome of Les Invalides in Paris. However, until French authorities allow the coffin to be opened for tests, theories will continue to swirl – some in respectable books and some in the more excitable corners of the internet – about the ultimate fate of one of history’s most fascinating characters. 

 

Siân Rees is author of The Many Deaths of Napoleon Bonaparte.