ly promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him,
and he received a pension of L1,000 a year. He had performed an
extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in
cutting out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the
batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the
capture of twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly
fifty merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards
of a hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right
eye and right arm.

Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with
three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was
dismantled in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St.
Pietro, and was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St.
Vincent.

The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and
judged that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on
the 28th, but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to
Sicily, then sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French,
and on August I came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet.
"Before this time to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have
gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."

Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete
and glorious in the annals of naval history.

Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and
powers to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron
Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of L2,000 a
year for his own life, and those of his successors; a grant of L10,000
was voted to him by the East India Company; and the King