The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson Volume II Part 27

Thus died the greatest naval hero, "take him for all in all," that ever lived. This will probably be said, as long as the world endures. It is not likely that he can ever be equalled, it is impossible that he should be surpa.s.sed.

The victory of this day, off Trafalgar, was one of the most compleatly glorious ever atchieved by Britons. About three o'clock, many of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps having struck their colours, their line had every where given way, and as many as possible endeavoured to effect their escape.

Eighteen men of war were taken; and three flag-officers, with a general, made prisoners of war. Among the s.h.i.+ps captured, were the Santissima Trinidada of a hundred and thirty-six guns, the Santa Anna of a hundred and twenty, and the Bucentaure of seventy-four: the last having Admiral Villeneuve, the French commander in chief, on board; as well as General Contamin, who had four thousand select troops embarked under his command; and the two former, the Spanish Vice-Admiral Don Ignatio Morea D'Alva, who died of his wounds, with Rear-Admiral Don Baltazar Hidalgo de Cisneros. The Santissima Trinidada, soon after the action, sunk; and L'Achille, a French seventy-four, by some mismanagement of the crew, almost immediately on striking, took fire, and blew up. The number of killed, wounded, and taken prisoners, was most prodigious. The French Admiral Dumanoir, with three French s.h.i.+ps, which had no share in the action, iniquitously fired, for some time, while making their ignominious retreat, on the Santissima Trinidada and other Spanish prizes which had struck their colours to our fleet; thus wantonly ma.s.sacreing their defenceless friends and allies. Many of the s.h.i.+ps taken or destroyed had upwards of four hundred men killed and wounded on board; and more than three thousand Spanish prisoners were liberally sent back to their own country, by the generous conquerors. The Bucentaure, it is said, had three hundred and sixty-five killed, and two hundred and nineteen wounded. Our loss, too, in killed and wounded, was far from inconsiderable; and many of our s.h.i.+ps were materially damaged.

The Royal Sovereign, in particular, was so cut up, that Vice-Admiral Collingwood, after the action, s.h.i.+fted his flag to the Euryalus, the Honourable Captain Blackwood, and towed his own s.h.i.+p out seaward.

Besides Lord Nelson, two other brave and estimable commanders lost their lives on this most memorably fatal day: Captain Duff, of the Mars; and Captain Cooke, of the Bellerophon. Captain Duff had two sons on board his own s.h.i.+p; one only twelve years of age, the other about fifteen: early in the engagement, a shot carried away both legs of the youngest; the elder soon afterwards fell; and, finally, their unfortunate father.

Not even these distressing circ.u.mstances were capable of exciting any great degree of generous commiseration for those worthy and gallant victims, so entirely was each heart occupied by agonizing reflections on the loss of him who had, in himself, ever been considered as alone a host. It was a victory the most compleatly brilliant, but never had a victory been gained which conveyed so little gladness to the hearts of the conquerors. Every bosom felt oppressed with sorrow, on a day of such triumph to their country; and not an eye closed, in the whole fleet, on the sad night by which it was succeeded, without pouring an affectionate tribute of manly tears to the memory of the G.o.dlike hero by whose merits it had been so certainly obtained, and by whose death it had been so dearly purchased. "He will never again lead us to conquest!" sobbed many a bursting heart. "Our commander, our master, our father, our friend, our companion, is no more, and when shall we behold his equal? Never, never, never!" Such was their love of the adored hero, that every virtuous individual in the fleet would gladly have lost his own life to have saved him. It is, indeed, stated as a positive fact, that a seaman of the Victory, who was, a little before the fatal catastrophe, suffering the amputation of an arm, actually said to the surgeon--"Well, this might, by some men, be considered as a sad misfortune; but I shall be proud of the accident, as it will make me the more resemble our brave commander in chief." Before the operation was finished, the sad tidings arrived below, that Lord Nelson was wounded. The seaman, who had never once shrunk, amidst all the pain he endured, now suddenly started from his seat; and vehemently exclaimed--"Good G.o.d! I would rather the shot had taken off my head, and spared his precious life!"

Vice-Admiral Collingwood, in his letter to the Admiralty, describing this great victory, says--"I have not only to lament, in common with the British navy, and the British nation, in the fall of the commander in chief, the loss of a hero, whose name will be immortal, and his memory ever dear to his country; but my heart is rent with the most poignant grief for the death of a friend, to whom, by many years intimacy, and a perfect knowledge of the virtues of his mind, which inspired ideas superior to the common race of men, I was bound by the strongest ties of affection: a grief, to which even the glorious occasion on which he fell, does not bring the consolation which, perhaps, it ought!"

When the dispatches, containing an account of the glorious victory off Cape Trafalgar, with the death of our chief hero, arrived in England, and were perused by his majesty, the king was greatly affected. Tears flowed from the royal eyes; and his majesty pathetically exclaimed--"We have lost more than we have gained!" They were read, at Windsor, by the queen, to the a.s.sembled princesses, and the whole royal group most affectionately wept the fall of the hero. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with a dignified excess of grief, most acutely felt the loss of the heroic supporter of his father's house; and a private letter of condolence, which his royal highness wrote to Alexander Davison, Esq. on the death of their inestimable friend, is replete with sentiments which augur highly for the probably future sovereign's adding new l.u.s.tre to the brilliant throne of his most renowned ancestors. The Duke of Clarence, too, long united in friends.h.i.+p to the hero, whom he venerated with an almost paternal regard, lamented him with little less than the truest filial sorrow. In short, from the entire royal family, through every subordinate degree of rank and virtue, to the humblest cla.s.s of existence, wherever the tidings came, tears overflowed every eye, and grief took entire possession of every heart. The glorious victory, though one of the greatest ever obtained by mortal, and though the last, as well as the most splendid, of the hero so beloved; was scarcely considered, by the nation, as an object worthy of those public rejoicings with which very inferior triumphs are constantly attended.

Cannon, indeed, as usual, announced the intelligence, but their sound conveyed a deep melancholy to the heart; the bells were rung, but their peals inspired no hilarity, and seemed little less than the mournful knells of death; nocturnal illuminations were displayed, but the transparencies which they discovered, amidst the gloom, presented only so many sad memorials of the universal loss, expressed by ingenious devices to the hero's memory, which the spectators beheld with sensations of augmented grief, and one general aspect of expressive but unutterable woe. If such was the state of the public feeling, what must have been that of the hero's dearest relatives and friends; of those who had to sustain all the superadded pangs of a loss so difficult to be supplied for the service of the country, so impossible for the felicities of themselves! Several months elapsed, before Lady Hamilton quitted her bed; and Mrs. Bolton and Mrs. Matcham, for a long time, suffered similar anguish and affliction. Indeed, even all the younger branches of this amiable and interesting family, as well as their respective parents, evinced the highest possible degree of sensibility and sorrow for their irretrievable calamity; a calamity which, to them, all the honours and emoluments a grateful nation may bestow, extending to his remotest kindred, at present as well as in future, can scarcely be considered as affording any adequate recompence.

The great council of the country failed not to express solemnly their strong sense of the irreparable loss, by unanimously voting all the grand ceremonials of a public interment beneath the centre of the dome in St. Paul's cathedral, and a monumental erection of commensurate grandeur to rise immediately above the hero's honoured remains.

His majesty, on the 9th of November, was also graciously pleased to elevate his lords.h.i.+p's brother and heir, the Reverend Dr. William Nelson, to the dignity of a Viscount and Earl of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, by the names, stiles, and t.i.tles, of Viscount Merton and Earl Nelson, of Trafalgar, and of Merton in the county of Surrey; the same to descend to his heirs male; and, in their default, to the heirs male, successively, of Susannah, wife of Thomas Bolton, Esq., and Catharine, wife of George Matcham, Esq. sisters of the late Lord Viscount Nelson.

The city of London, the Committee of Merchants at Lloyd's Coffee-House, and the respective corporations of several cities and chief towns in different parts of the united kingdom, publicly expressed their sense of the national loss, by the death of it's princ.i.p.al hero; and proposed various plans for perpetuating the remembrance of his transcendent services, by monumental erections, &c.

The body of the hero, which had been preserved in spirits, was brought to England in the Victory; the crew having positively refused to part with the corpse of their adored commander, till it should be safely landed in their native country. They were resolved, they said, one and all, to accompany him, as it should please Heaven, either to the bottom of the ocean, or see his sacred remains deposited in the honoured tomb which would, doubtless, be proudly prepared for them by a grateful nation; and could not suffer the corpse to be sent home in any s.h.i.+p subject to capture by the enemy.

After laying in state, a few days, at Greenwich Hospital, the body was conveyed, with all possible aquatic grandeur and solemnity, to the Admiralty; from whence, the next day, Thursday, January 9, 1806, borne on a grand funeral car, and with a pomp of procession scarcely ever equalled the ill.u.s.trious hero's hallowed remains were finally deposited beneath the dome of St. Paul's cathedral.

Never, perhaps, were the mournful obsequies of any hero so numerously and so respectably attended; never was any human being deposited in the earth more universally and sincerely wept by every eye which beheld any part of the solemn ceremony. The tears of millions, on that melancholy day, bore testimony to his matchless worth; to the truth of that sentiment which he had piously p.r.o.nounced, in his last moments--"Thank G.o.d, I have been enabled to do my duty to my King and Country!"

May the same Almighty Power inspire the hearts of his King and Country, to fulfil, in their utmost extent, every wish and expectation of the Dying Hero! And may each virtuous individual, in whom the blood of the Nelsons shall flow, to the last drop which can be traced, for ever find friendly patronage among the rulers of a nation, which has certainly, at an eventful crisis, been powerfully exalted, and perhaps preserved, by the example and influence of the immortal hero, who so freely and fatally shed his own last drop in the faithful service of his King and Country!

THE END.