ed thither the squadrons
of Russia, which shut up our army in the midst of a hostile people
and led the Porte to declare against us, which put India beyond
our reach and thrust France to the brink of ruin, for it rekindled
the hardly extinct war with Austria and brought Suvaroff and the
Austro-Russians to our very frontiers."[1]

[Footnote 1: GUERRES MARITIMES, II, 129.]

The whole campaign affords an instance of an overseas expedition
daringly undertaken in the face of a hostile fleet (though it should
be remembered that the British were not in the Mediterranean when
it was planned), reaching its destination by extraordinary good
luck, and its possibilities then completely negatived by the
reestablishment of enemy naval control. The efforts of the French
army to extricate itself northward through Palestine were later
thwarted partly by the squadron under Commodore Sidney Smith, which
captured the siege guns sent to Acre by sea and aided the Turks in
the defense of the fortress. In October of 1799 Bonaparte escaped
to France in a frigate. French fleets afterwards made various futile
efforts to succor the forces left in Egypt, which finally surrendered
to an army under Abercromby, just too late to strengthen the British
in the peace negotiations of October, 1801.

Nelson's subsequent activities in command of naval forces in Italian
waters need not detain us. Physically and nervously weakened from
the effects of his wound and arduous campaign, he fell under the
influence of Lady Hamilton and the wretched court of Naples, lent
naval assistance to schemes of doubtful advantage to his country,
and in June of 1800 incurred the displeasure of the Admiralty by
direct disobedience of orders to send support to Minorca. He returned
to England at the close of 1800 with the glory of his victory somewhat
tarnished, and with blemishes on his private character which
unfortunately, as will be seen, affected also his professional
reputation.

_The Copenhagen Campaign_

Under the rapid scene-shifting of Napoleon, the political stage
had by this time undergone another complete change from that which
followed the battle of the Nile. Partly at least as a consequence
of that battle, the so-called Second Coalition had been formed by
Great Britain, Russia, and Austria, the armies of the two latter
powers, as already stated, carrying the war again to the French
frontiers. It required only the presence of Bonaparte, in supreme
control aft