ry
sense of reflecting honor; but in the secondary sense of being a reflection
upon those who had denied a just claim, the phrase, ambiguous as it stands,
represented accurately his feelings. "I own, my dear Sir," he said again to
the Premier, with reference to this decoration, "great as this honour will
be, it will have its alloy, if I cannot at the same time wear the medal for
the Battle of Copenhagen, the greatest and most honourable reward in the
power of our Sovereign to bestow, as it marks my personal services."

[56] See Pettigrew, vol. ii. p. 225; Morrison, vol. ii. p. 176.

[57] This habit is mentioned by Captain James Hillyar, for extracts from
whose journals the author is indebted to Admiral Sir W.R. Mends, G.C.B.

[58] Morrison Collection, No. 632, October 8, 1801.

CHAPTER XIX.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.--THE LONG WATCH OFF
TOULON.--OCCUPATIONS OF A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

MAY, 1803--JANUARY, 1805. AGE, 45-46.

When Nelson, after a three years' absence, returned to the
Mediterranean in 1803, he found the conditions, upon which the
military balance of power there depended, greatly altered from those
he had known during the period of his previous service. He had been
present, indeed, almost an eye-witness, at the tremendous reverse
associated with the name of Marengo, for that battle, it will be
remembered, was fought while he was at Leghorn on his return to
England; but Marengo, and the conventions following it, were at the
moment only the beginning of an end which then could not be foreseen.

The most significant token of the entire change of conditions--of the
predominant, far-reaching, and firmly fastened grip of France on the
land--was the presence of an army corps of fifteen thousand men in the
extreme southeast of Italy, occupying the Kingdom of Naples from the
river Ofanto, on the Adriatic coast, round to the Bradano on the Gulf
of Taranto, and including the useful ports of Brindisi and Taranto.
This distant and ex-centric extension of the arms of the Republic
bespoke Bonaparte's confidence in the solidity of his situation in the
South of Europe; for under previous circumstances, even after his
victorious campaign of 1796, he had always deprecated an occupation of
Naples, and relied upon threats and a display of force to insure the
quiescence of that state. That one of his first steps, upon the
renewal of war with Great Britain, should have been to place a large
body of tr