"La récompense des hommes est d’estimer leurs chefs."
— René Quinton
[The reward of men is to esteem their leaders.]Humanity after Victory.
— From Nelson’s Prayer
Horatio Nelson, born as the fifth son of an English country parson, serves as an example of the well-regarded warrior with far-reaching, focused activity. Throughout his life, he had a delicate but resilient constitution. At nine, he lost his mother, and at twelve, he went to sea. This was not considered unusual. What a midshipman had to endure at that time is familiar to us from biographies and novels. It was a case of "eat or die!"
“What has poor Horatio done wrong,” wrote his uncle, Captain Suckling, who arranged his position, “that this frail boy must now endure the harshness of a seaman's life? But perhaps a cannonball will take off his head in the first battle, and then his troubles will be over.”
His head was not lost, but his right arm and an eye were, and there was no shortage of bruises, wounds, and illnesses. Remarkably, his health returned quickly, along with his raptor-like striking force and immense energy. Even as an admiral, he would get seasick at the start of a new voyage. Before he turned forty, in the "Year of Glory," his once straw-blonde hair was nearly white.
There are plants that break stones as they grow, yet are moved by the slightest breeze. In them, hardness and softness combine; their fibers are both strong and flexible. Since these qualities fundamentally contradict each other, they rarely come together in human character and, when they do, they produce extraordinary effects.
Nelson's admirable qualities also included disappointments and struggles, severe injuries, and an early death. We must view his life as a whole, like a work of art – the question is whether it succeeded, not how much detail it contains or how long it occupied the artist.
The peak and end of his life came together at Trafalgar; triumph and death intertwined as rarely happens in a great life, at least in history – it evokes mythological ideals. Wellington lived much longer than Lord Nelson, but the decades that followed the day of Waterloo added nothing to his fame. He offers an example of the organic hardening of the conservative, whose perspective narrows with age. The portrait by d’Orsay, painted thirty years after the decisive battle, bears witness to this: the noble features appear to have become rigid, marked by an unyielding determination at any cost. We must view this beyond good and evil; it was precisely what gave him the strength to endure the great day to its end.
Wellington was eleven years younger than Nelson; he met him only once, in 1805, when he had already made a name for himself in India. Both waited in the anteroom of Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and entered into a conversation, which Wellington, then still Sir Arthur Wellesley, found little pleasure in. He was apparently put off by one of the great man’s weaknesses, which others had also noticed: his vanity.
Nelson then went out, likely to inquire with the office clerk about the name of his companion, and returned completely transformed. “Everything that had seemed like empty chatter had fallen away from him; he now spoke about the state of Great Britain and the political and military prospects on the continent with such sharp understanding and well-founded knowledge that I was at least as surprised this time, though in a positive way, as I had been during the first part of our conversation. He now spoke truly like a statesman and an officer.”
This account also offers a glimpse into the waiting room of the Colonial Office at that time, where two men of such significance found time for such an extended conversation. Wellington remarked many years later: “I would not have believed it possible for a person to change so suddenly and thoroughly.”
We hear of a similar transformation from Lady Spencer, who sat next to Nelson at a meal shortly after his return from Tenerife and found that “at first, in all his mannerisms, he came across as a fool. This impression was so strong that I was completely taken aback and listened spellbound as his wonderful mind suddenly unfolded in conversation.”
Such testimonies suggest a contrast between being and appearance, which today we might describe as the distinction between genotype and phenotype, and which we often encounter when a great spirit resides in a frail body. This contrast must have struck contemporaries even more strongly, given the mutilations that had diminished his physical appearance – what Erasmus referred to as "my little body." This is why Nelson had a strong need for external compensation, for prestige through titles and honors. In the youthful portraits, such as that of the eighteen-year-old second lieutenant by Rigaud, the sword appears too large, and in most of the later portraits, up to the one in Westminster Abbey, the decorations are too numerous and oversized. A popular print depicting the briefing before Trafalgar shows him among his captains as the only one richly decorated and wearing a large hat, under which his narrow face appears ghost-like. The fascination he inspired is evident from the abundance of his portraits; they are found on plates, mugs, tobacco boxes, and wall tiles.
Among the portraits, the one painted by Abbot in October 1797 stands out significantly. It shows the “Rear Admiral of the Blue Squadron” after the loss of his arm; the stump is still not healed. This is reflected in his face: partial death, which has been overcome. "Maladie de relais": new youth takes hold. Like many amputees, Nelson claimed to still feel pain in the arm he had lost; to him, this served as a confirmation of his belief in immortality, even though he did not need such validation.
After Aboukir, the commanders of his squadron wanted to own a portrait of Nelson and commissioned a painter, who, however, kept delaying the work. Finally, the painter admitted he was unable to complete it: “In these features, humanity and ambition are paired in such a distressing way that I do not feel capable of undertaking the portrait.” Of course, one might also suspect that the painter's talent was insufficient to capture in a work of art two qualities that, though they contradict each other, do not exclude one another. However, both the common man and the nation were capable of this, and we owe Joseph Conrad the statement: “It is to the Navy's credit that they understood Nelson.”
Nelson acted and presented himself in a way that was pleasing to the people and the common man, and he reveled in it: “I am a child of other people's opinions.” By this, he meant that his sense of life depended on his fame, and he contributed to its promotion himself. It pleased him when he was enthusiastically surrounded by crowds in the cities. He had all the qualities of a national hero, in whom his people could see themselves and recognize their own reflection. These included a simple education with its strengths and weaknesses, an unwavering belief in the orders of this world and the next, a naïve joy in outward things, immediate kindness and severity, and a heart for the "lower deck."
The national hero must appeal to the undifferentiated, indefinable masses; he must have a strong connection to the people. If that connection is too finely woven, anecdotes must help facilitate understanding. In this respect, Nelson, born under the sign of Libra, strikes a happy medium between commanders like Frederick the Great and Prince Eugene on one side, and Blücher or Suvorov on the other. The sympathy he arouses penetrates without loss through the social and intellectual strata of the nation, and, even more remarkably, it is enduring. He is one of those figures who continually attract both artists and historians. Even after World War II, which cleared away not only the living but also extinguished many old glories, the two beautiful biographies by Carola Oman and Oliver Warner appeared—testimonies to the fact that Nelson’s star retained its brilliance, even at a distance and despite a clouded atmosphere.
The humanity of such a spirit is indivisible; criticism can only do it justice in its entirety. There is an unmistakable sign of its stature: it grows with the demands placed upon it. The higher the hurdle, the easier and freer the leap with which it is overcome. Humanity becomes stronger the more the next person needs help. This is certainly less urgent in a meeting room or at a banquet than in times of danger.
On the evening of Aboukir, struck in the forehead by a fragment of a grenade and blinded by the blood flowing from the wound, Nelson believed he was mortally wounded. "Now it's over—give my regards to my wife!" He was brought to the dressing station, where the ship's surgeon, who was busy with another wounded man, immediately turned to him. “No, no, continue your work; you don’t need to prioritize me over my brave soldiers!” After the explosion of the French flagship, he hurried to the deck and led the rescue of the drowning.
The actions he undertook that night and the following day verge on the incomprehensible, especially considering that the battle had been preceded by a week filled with sleeplessness and unbearable nervousness. We also learn in passing that he suffered from excruciating toothache. It was a night of incredible exertion. On both sides, the gunners were so exhausted that they fell asleep during the firing. After a brief, death-like sleep, they jumped back to the cannons as if they had been lying in wait, continuing the barrage. Passion had drained nature to its limits.
In the days of sailing ships, battles between the main fleets often lasted longer than in our century and were more stubbornly fought. We even know of a four-day battle. In the long night of Aboukir, both sides fought with superhuman dedication. Even literature has left traces of this terrifying night, such as in Alfred de Vigny’s The Misery and Grandeur of Military Life. There, he mentions a captain who, fatally wounded, in order to command longer and not bleed out so quickly, had himself placed in a tub of bran. Is it an error or poetic license on de Vigny’s part that he attributes this act to Admiral Brueys, the supreme commander? The glory of this deed belongs to the commander of Le Tonnant, Captain Dupetit Thouars, who, just before his death, had the flag nailed to the mast.
Brueys, too, already wounded three times, refused to leave the deck and commanded while leaning on a box of ammunition until a fourth blow tore him to pieces. It was part of Nelson's luck that this admiral, as de Vigny says, was "as stubborn as a mule." He wanted to fight and was jealous of the army. "Do they think we are ferrymen?" Thus, he remained anchored and engaged in the battle, even though, as he had told Bonaparte on the way to Alexandria, he believed this was a grave mistake. “But,” as de Vigny says, “if he made mistakes, he atoned for them gloriously.”
The Battle of Aboukir heralded one of the great turning points in European history. It occurred almost exactly six years after the cannonade at Valmy and represents a positive counterpart, as it was the first real response to the French Revolution. The news had an electrifying effect not only in England but across all of Europe. This victory not only thwarted the Egyptian expedition and made England master of the Mediterranean, but it also gave the European powers the impetus for the War of the Second Coalition. The day of Aboukir can therefore be placed alongside that of Trafalgar, which secured English naval dominance for a long time; as a bold endeavor, it was even more significant. Off Cape Trafalgar, a classical encounter developed, where the fleets spotted each other from afar on the open sea. Lauvergne, a senior surgeon in the French Navy and author of The Last Hours and the Death, in which he describes naval battles as "such a monstrous thought that one cannot comprehend how humans could ever conceive of it," also depicts the approach: "The fleets silently draw nearer to one another; like mighty sea monsters about to engage in a battle of annihilation, they observe each other, measure each other, trying to use their sailing skills to harness the wind and waves until the signal to attack appears on the admiral's mainmast."
At Aboukir, the threat wasn’t just the enemy's guns but the proximity of land, something sailors fear more. The victory there was a masterpiece, a daring piece of precision in a confined space—demonstrated by the grounding of the Culloden. "Such a race had never been run before," remarked Lady Hamilton. "Honor est a Nilo," a successful anagram dedicated to the hero of Aboukir, emerged during those weeks when people adorned themselves "à la Nelson." The excitement triggered by the news was overwhelming—people fainted upon hearing it, including the Queen of Naples and the First Lord of the Admiralty. In such tense environments, enemies are magnetically drawn to each other. Nelson had no doubt he would find the French; he pursued them like a bloodhound. "With the first favorable breeze, we set sail. When I return, I will either be crowned with laurel or lying stretched out under cypress trees," he wrote from Syracuse to the Hamiltons.
"When the enemy was in sight," said Captain Berry, "everyone was overjoyed with exuberant excitement; the happiest of all was probably the Admiral himself." He repeatedly stuck his head out of the cabin window, partly to estimate the distance and partly to soothe his terrible toothache in the wind, overhearing a sailor saying to his comrade at the gun beside him, "Look at them, the damned rascals, there they are at last. I tell you, Jack, if we don't thrash them, they'll thrash us."
"Yes, I knew what kind of men mine were made of, so I dared to open the battle with only a few leading ships." The trust that united him with his captains and crew was so strong that, as Berry notes, signals were almost unnecessary. Such trust is always mutual, and René Quinton, one of the last great warriors, recognized it as the secret of victory itself: "The bravery of the leader multiplies the valor of the troops. There are troops without leaders, but there are no exhausted troops."
Nelson embodies everything ever praised about courage, from individual behavior in the face of danger to the inspiration that a crew, a fleet, or even a nation can draw from him. "Danger creates genius." Another quote from Quinton applies to him: "It happens that a hero, just to test his strength, exposes himself." Thus, we find Nelson in places where a commander has no business being; more than once, his impulse leads him beyond the rules of warfare. From Gibraltar, he writes to Fanny that he is in cheerful company, "although it would be better if we were alongside a Spaniard." On another occasion, after he failed to restrain his temperament, she replied, urging him to leave boarding actions to his captains; similar restraint would have been wise during some of the land assaults he participated in, competing with the infantry. At barely fifteen, as a coxswain on an Arctic expedition, he sneaks ashore with a comrade to hunt a polar bear; the musket misfires. "A blow with the butt, and we've got him!" Fortunately, the bear fled.
In Nelson, we see the unmistakable mark of a born warrior: the weather clears when the cannons begin to speak. Such warriors do not need to be urged into battle; they do not need the shout of "To the cannons!" like Grouchy's soldiers at Waterloo. Nelson needed more restraint than encouragement; he was magnetically drawn to the fire. He did not ask about the enemy’s strength, only where to find them. "Hard work," he said to Colonel Stewart before Copenhagen, "but believe me, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else for thousands."
Furthermore: "If signals are not seen, a commander certainly does no wrong by engaging the enemy." Nelson was particularly poor at seeing retreat signals. This was the case before Copenhagen when things began to look grim, and Admiral Parker, the commander-in-chief, raised the signal to break off the engagement. That seemed to agitate Nelson more than the Danish fire – he was seen running across the deck, waving his arm stump: "Damn if I would do that – I only have one eye, and I have the right to be blind sometimes." He asked for the telescope and held it to his damaged eye: "I really don’t see the signal."
The era benefited the sailor Nelson just as much as it did the revolutionary generals on the battlefields. In both cases, new forces shattered rigid lines. However, the good old ships were still dependent on wind and weather. From shipbuilding in the docks to maneuvers, everything was still a pure craft, overseen by masters, and apart from firearms, the telescope, and the compass, the technology remained at a level comparable to antiquity. Hourglasses were still in use. "We fought eight glasses," the diary of the Minotaur on August 1, 1798, the day of the Battle of Abukir, states. Battles could still be overseen from a single point with no aid beyond a telescope. It would be over twenty years before, at Navarino, fleets would meet for the last pure sailing battle. In 1862, during the American Civil War, the first duel of ironclads occurred at Hampton Roads between the Merrimac and the Monitor.
The age of engineers had begun, and there were already photographs of both crews. Königgrätz coincides with Hampton Roads in the same decade. From then on, steam power had to be considered in every movement, both at sea and on land. Command became more sober, more mathematical. However, this should not be blamed on the soldiers, as Valéry attempts to do in his Conquête méthodique when criticizing Moltke, whom he portrays as a "man without lips." The greater predictability of the factors leading to battle follows a law.
Nelson was no longer confined to the strict line, from which deviation in both land and sea battles was not just considered a tactical error but a serious offense. Yet even further off was a future where ships would be controlled as floating outposts from land-based command centers. Nelson could still ignore signals from the flagship, and Jellicoe, at the beginning of the Battle of Jutland, could cut off radio communication: "I am in action"—today, that’s no longer possible. In the movements of the Bismarck in 1942, direct command had already been minimized. This is even more pronounced in the cabin of a spaceship. The 19th century could no longer produce figures like Frederick and Eugene, and the 20th century no Napoleon, despite the vastly expanded scope of operations. Yet names hardly leave a lasting impression anymore. One possible aspect is that homo faber increasingly triumphs over homo ludens and his values.
For Nelson, the old saying holds true: the sailor is a child of nature and duty. He can balance great contrasts, weight and counterweight within himself. He follows both his education and his heart, conservative in principles yet liberal in human relations, both to their possible extremes. Traits of utmost severity and astonishing kindness can be observed in him. When he says that Sunday is as good a day as any to hang a mutineer, provided there is no delay, this must be understood against the backdrop of the iron discipline typical of sailing ships. Insights into such details can be found in the reports of the mutiny on the Bounty and how it was punished. The same Nelson, during his time as a post captain, managed to save the life of a deserter who had been sentenced to death but was evidently treated unjustly. The man had been held in cramped conditions "without tobacco" for months before his trial.
The mental calm that Nelson maintained after severe wounds, even when mortally injured, gives the impression that he observed himself from the outside, detached from his body. After the failed attack on Santa Cruz, when he came aboard the Theseus with his arm shattered, he was shown all the customary honors, which he correctly returned. He refused any assistance. "Leave me be, I still have both legs and a healthy arm besides. Tell the doctor to hurry and prepare the instruments. I know I will lose my arm, so the sooner it's gone, the better." His right arm hung limply, and with his left, he pulled himself up the ship’s ladder. During the operation, he felt the coldness of the metal more acutely than the cuts themselves, and so he ordered that, in the future, hot water be provided before every battle to warm the instruments.
In battle, the unity formed during the long, peaceful periods at sea became visible. The Victory resembled a floating fortress in the harbors and even more so during observation and blockade missions, where, despite the hard work, there were also some comforts. There was the daily duty with its endless watches, maneuvers, issuing orders, and maintenance, but also the hearty meals, with roasting spits and ovens for the sailors’ beloved plum pudding, the band, and the drummer announcing the admiral’s dinner with the melody "The Roast Beef of Old England." From these weeks and months, a loving artistry has been preserved, focusing on the revered, almost legendary man. It helps us understand why the fleet came to life when his flag was raised, and why after his death, "everyone shuffled about like jellyfish." They risked their lives for him; in one boarding skirmish, the boatswain Sykes just managed to deflect a blow aimed at Nelson’s head with his bare arm, losing his right hand in the process.
Not only Lady Hamilton was "Nelson-crazy" at that time. The fame the admiral enjoyed during his lifetime is best evidenced by the fact that while the English did not accept his relationship with her, they tolerated it with affectionate indulgence. It caused enough scandal, not only among those directly involved, like Fanny and Sir William, not to mention the fact that the behavior of two lovers almost always becomes a nuisance to society.
Emma Hamilton’s influence on the admiral was considerable; it extended even to major state matters. He left the advantageous station off Marittimo to intervene in Naples, whose royal couple were friends of the Hamiltons. If a Shakespeare had been Nelson’s contemporary, he might have gifted us a counterpart to Antony and Cleopatra.
Curious to a modern soldier, for whom cover and camouflage have become second nature, is Nelson’s calm pacing on the quarterdeck during battle. This not only exposed him to greater danger from the heavy cannon fire but also made him an easy target for sharpshooters during close engagements. The fatal shot at Trafalgar was fired by one of the topsail marksmen aboard the Redoutable, peering down onto the deck of the Victory from the rigging. This happened after the dreadful hour Nelson had spent pacing and conversing with his flag captain Hardy. At one point, the cannons of the enemy ships were so close that their muzzles touched, and the Victory was almost boarded before the deck was nearly swept clean by gunfire. Nelson remarked, "It’s too hot here to last much longer." His secretary was torn apart by a cannonball and thrown overboard without hesitation by the sailors. "Was that poor Scott?"
A man who could love, and thus was loved by all. Even as he lay below deck in the hell of Trafalgar with a shattered spine, his thoughts circled around Emma Hamilton. "How dearly people cling to life," he murmured to himself. Then, speaking to Hardy, who had come down to say goodbye, he said, "Take care of Lady Hamilton. Yes, Hardy, take care of Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy."
"Nelson's death" became a significant subject for artists, a focal point for dramatic compositions. The walls of naval museums are covered with such depictions. A. W. Devis, who boarded the Victory after it docked in Portsmouth and heard eyewitness accounts on the spot, chose to forgo a panorama of burning ships and drowning men; instead, the setting of his Ecce homo is a gray, dimly lit berth, sparsely illuminated by the glow of ship lanterns, with rough beams overhead. The dying man lies beneath a pale sheet; the doctor feels his pulse, and the chaplain rubs his chest. The admiral's coat with its medals is crumpled at his feet, alongside his bloodstained shirt. The painting is restrained in color, despite being intended as the centerpiece of a red, roaring hell. The fire seems to fade and diminish, as if the ship were sailing away. The admiral is leaving the ship. "After victory, humanity.