it was so near exhausted." "Had not Nelson quitted the
blockade," he wrote a week later, "and taken the ships off the
station, it might have fallen about this time."[6]

Lord Keith had been engaged for six weeks past in the famous blockade
and siege of Genoa, the garrison of which, spent with famine and
disease, marched out on the 5th of June, 1800. On the 14th--the day
Nelson reached Leghorn--was fought the Battle of Marengo, in which the
Austrians were totally defeated, the French army under Bonaparte
remaining victorious across their line of retreat to Mantua. The next
day Melas signed a convention, abandoning Northern Italy, as far as
the Mincio, to the French, to whom were given up all the fortified
places, Genoa included. At midnight of June 18, Nelson received an
order from Keith to take all the ships at Leghorn to Spezia, for
certain minor military purposes. Nelson sent the "Alexander" and a
frigate, but remained himself in Leghorn with the "Foudroyant," ready,
he wrote the admiral, "to receive the queen and royal family, should
such an event be necessary." Keith rejoined with a peremptory order
that no ships-of-the-line should be used for such purpose; the Queen,
he said, had better get to Vienna as fast as she could, and not think
of going back to Palermo. "If the French fleet gets the start of ours
a day, Sicily cannot hold out even that one day." "Lord Keith,"
commented Nelson, "believes reports of the Brest fleet, which I give
not the smallest credit to." "I own I do not believe the Brest fleet
will return to sea," he told Keith; "and if they do, the Lord have
mercy on them, for our fleet will not, I am sure." It was not the
least of his conspicuous merits that he was blind to imaginative or
exaggerated alarms. Keith saw too vividly all that might happen in
consequence of recent reverses--much more than could happen.

On the 24th of June the latter reached Leghorn in person. "I must go
to Leghorn," he complained, "to land the fugitives, and to be bored by
Lord Nelson for permission to take the Queen to Palermo, and princes
and princesses to all parts of the globe." The Queen was in a panic,
and besought him with tears to give her the "Foudroyant," but Keith
was obdurate. "Mr. Wyndham[7] arrived here yesterday from Florence,"
wrote Lady Minto on the 6th of July to her sister. "He left the Queen
of Naples, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, and Nelson, at Leghorn. The
Queen has given up all thoughts of coming he