wing
morning the port saluted the broad pendant of the new commodore. The
next day, April 10, Beaulieu attacked the French at Voltri. The
"Agamemnon," with another sixty-four-gun ship, the "Diadem," and two
frigates, sailed in the evening, and stood along the shore, by
preconcerted arrangement, to cover the advance and harass the enemy.
At 11 P.M. the ships anchored abreast the positions of the Austrians,
whose lights were visible from their decks--the sails hanging in the
clewlines, ready for instant movement. They again got under way the
following day, and continued to the westward, seeing the French troops
in retreat upon Savona. The attack, Nelson said, anticipated the hour
fixed for it, which was daylight; so that, although the ships had
again started at 4 A.M. of the 11th, and reached betimes a point from
which they commanded every foot of the road, the enemy had already
passed. "Yesterday afternoon I received, at five o'clock, a note from
the Baron de Malcamp [an aid-de-camp], to tell me that the general had
resolved to attack the French at daylight this morning, and on the
right of Voltri. Yet by the Austrians getting too forward in the
afternoon, a slight action took place; and, in the night, the French
retreated. They were aware of their perilous situation, and passed our
ships in the night. Had the Austrians kept back, very few of the
French could have escaped." Whether this opinion was wholly accurate
may be doubted; certain it is, however, that the corps which then
passed reinforced betimes the positions in the mountains, which
steadfastly, yet barely, checked the Austrian attack there the
following day. Beaulieu wrote that the well-timed co-operation of the
squadron had saved a number of fine troops, which must have been lost
in the attack. This was so far satisfactory; but the economizing of
one's own force was not in Nelson's eyes any consolation for the
escape of the enemy, whose number he estimated at four thousand. "I
beg you will endeavour to impress on those about the general," he
wrote to the British minister, "the necessity of punctuality in a
joint operation, for its success to be complete."

There was, however, to be no more co-operation that year on the
Riviera. For a few days Nelson remained in suspense, hoping for good
news, and still very far from imagining the hail-storm of ruinous
blows which a master hand, as yet unrecognized, was even then dealing
to the allied cause. On the 15th only h