Nelson & His World

Looking on the Internet I came upon this site with many interesting biographies.

http://www.napoleon-series.org/research ... phies.html

One of them is the biography of Caracciolo. Dr. Gabriel Vital-Durant (writer of this biography) makes it sound as if Nelson was mainly to blame for his hanging. He was sentenced to prison first but had his sentenced changed into hanging after Nelson had a talk with Prince Thurn who precided over court.

http://www.napoleon-series.org/research ... iolo1.html

I think you can wonder why Nelson and his officers never asked themselves why the inhabitants of Naples got so rebellious in the first place. People usually don’t get rebellious without any reason to do so.

Sylvia

I read Dr Vital-Durant's short biography with some interest as it contained many points that were new to me, and indeed, unknown to many of the biographers of Nelson whose works are on my shelves.

I should be interested to know his sources for the claim that the Neapolitan court martial sentenced Caracciolo to life imprisonment and that the sentence was changed by Nelson to death by hanging, despite a plea from Count Thurn.

According to several biographies I have consulted (Robert Southey, Carola Oman, Tom Pocock) it was the court comprising of Neapolitan officers that sentenced Caracciolo to death by majority verdict, Count Thurn himself voting for death and, according to Tom Pocock, pronouncing the verdict that he 'be hanged in two hours' time'.

Nelson was not present at the trial but confirmed the sentence an hour later. He rejected Caracciolo's plea, supported by Thurn and Sir William Hamilton, that he should have more time to prepare himself. Nelson also rejected Caracciolo's plea to be shot rather than hanged. As far as I can see, Nelson part was to confirm the sentence of death imposed not by him but by the court, and to insist that it should be speedily implemented.

I have 'Googled' Dr Vital-Durant but have been unable to find any reference to him, or his wider contributions to Nelsonian scholarship other than this short biography of Caracciolo. Can anyone offer further enlightenment?

Dr. Vital-Durrant's narrative states:



I'd always thought Caracciolo was hanged in June.

According to Mahan, no record or transcript existed of the trial. But more recently Terry Coleman quotes John Rushout, Italian speaking emigre, who was present for a short time at the trial at Nelson's request. Rushout was ordered out of the room by Thurn and...



Coleman then goes on to say that Rushout claimed the King of Naples (on his arrival) had said he would have spared Caracciolo's life, and that Lady Hamilton had been dining at the time Caracciolo was hanged. (I think we've covered Brenton's later accusations that she was present at the execution, and persuaded Nelson to have her rowed around the dangling corpse, on another thread.)

Rushout also helped Captain Foote draft the terms of capitulation that neither he, nor Ruffo, nor anyone else involved in it, according to the King, had the authority to do.

As far as the King of Naples' alleged forgiveness goes, I refer to the recently discovered and published letter from the King to Cardinal Ruffo, dated 25th June 1799, which clears up many questions about who said and did what in the Bay of Naples at that time.

The original is in TNA, and completely blasts out of the water the theory that Nelson (or the Hamiltons) acted without/beyond the King's authority, and was published in full (in Italian and English) for the first time in 2008, in John A Davis and Giovanni Capuano's excellent 'The Hamilton Letters.'

Here's what Ferdinand had to say about his orders with regard to the Rebels:



Like Tycho, I haven't come across Dr. V-D before and would be interested to see the sources. However, it's highly possible that the scenario he refers to, like many older accounts in print and on the net, may - at the very least - require updating to include the King's letter and Davis and Capuano's fair, unbiased and well-evidenced summing up.

You should also read 'Nelson, Britannia's God of War', by one of Britain's eminent contemporary naval historians, Andrew Lambert, who gives a very refreshing reappraisal of Nelson's whole career and puts it in a new light – including the 'Black Legend' of 1799 as it came to be known. Indeed there is a whole appendix devoted to the latter at the back of the book.

In it he comes to the conclusion that Nelson is innocent of blame and has either been made the scapegoat by various other parties, including the Whig opposition led by Charles James Fox, or been the victim of idle gossip and criticism. Here he actually mentions Robert Southey, who he believes did Nelson a great disservice through his biography of 1813 and which has stuck. He also believes that Nelson's association with Emma Hamilton had some influence and that his enemies used it to blacken his name in the affair.

He mentions the fact that Nelson was backed in his action by Queen Carolina, his Admiral (Keith), the minister at Naples (Acton), and most important of all, the King Ferdinand. He makes a very convincing case and I find it very difficult myself to believe that Nelson would have completely change his character overnight and taken such drastic action into his own hands. (Of course there have been suggestions that he was still suffering concussion from the Nile, but I don't believe that has been proved.) We perhaps should remember too that throughout his life, Nelson was driven by deference to the monarch, the rule of law and the status quo. I believe anything else would have been outside Nelson's nature and in this matter he would surely have applied the same rules. Quite simply he put the matter into the hands of King Ferdinand as the legitimate ruler, who then put it into the hands of the Neapolitan judicial officers, who passed the sentence on Carracciolo. Regarding his plea to be shot rather than hanged, Lambert says that this was dismissed as being inappropriate to his crime.

Lambert gives a final and perhaps telling sentence, that sometimes the truth is simply not enough.

I believe Pietro Colletta in his 'History of the Kingdom of Naples' (c1840) was the original source for the claim that the Neapolitan court martial sentenced Caracciolo to life imprisonment and that the sentence was changed by Nelson to death by hanging.

Dr Gabriel Vital-Durand appears to be a medical doctor - his email address is available on napoleon-series.org if you would like to invite him to join the thread (Click the link on his name).

Rushout's account is not particularly flattering to Nelson or Emma, but he also seems to be inaccurate in some details. His account says the court martial was set for 1 o'clock, although he had the impression it started earlier than the time specified. He says that the King arrived 10 or 12 hours after the execution and was so hurt and mortified that there had been no effort to spare Caracciolo's life that he refused to come on board the Foudroyant and proceeded instead to his palace on the island of Procida, where he remained for the next 10 to 12 days. I don't believe that timetable matches up too well to other versions.


Kester, ignoring the wilder accusations, perhaps the point is that he might have been wiser to have passed the matter of Caracciolo's execution back to the King to decide whether to offer clemency?

I think the Davis/Capuano discovery in The Hamilton Letters is incontrovertible evidence in black and white that Ferdinand intended no clemency to traitrous officers. And gruesome as the details of Caraccioli's execution were, ignominious death was the punishment for traitors.

Andrew Lambert's judicious exposition of the background in The Black Legend is a very helpful and illuminating analysis of the situation. Roger Knight is less ready to exculpate Nelson entirely; but his careful and balanced observations do suggest that Nelson has taken an unfair share of the criticism for the excesses in Naples for which no single person can be blamed. It is a remarkably balanced and unpartisan account which recognises misjudgements and mishandlings on Nelson's part in a situation in which his more notable qualities - 'speed of thought, powers of leadership and decisive action' were less necessary than 'the talent and patience required to reconcile almost irreconcilable political divisions.' In the febrile and chaotic atmosphere of Naples, where 'after five weary years of war, compromise and compassion were not in the air', it is unsurprising that there were errors of judgement that can, with hindsight, be criticised; but these were owing more to lack of experience and temperamental unsuitablity to the task, as well as his traditionalist 'mindset' noted by Kester, rather than the more hysterical criticisms levelled at him.

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting the King would have exercised clemency, merely that it would have been wiser to allow the King to be seen publicly as the final arbiter. No doubt Nelson's 'traditionalist mindset' precipitated his hasty implementation of the King's intentions. And yes, I take full advantage of hindsight as well as attitudes derived from a different time and place, but Nelson's judgment always did go out of the window when royalty was involved!

Tony,

I see your point, but is it absolutely certain that Nelson did not refer the verdict of the court back to Ferdinand, or that the latter had not intimated his own decision to Nelson, even privately.

It would seem from the Davis/Capuano 'The Hamilton Letters', that Ferdinand's view was clear and uncompromising and that by his own calculations, Caracciolo should hang. Therefore it seems likely that, even if a verdict of life imprisonment was given by the court, this would have been overturned by the King as the final arbiter, and a verdict of death by hanging subsituted.

Referring to Nelson's 'traditionalist mindset' I cannot believe that Nelson, believing as he did, would have just altered the verdict of the court just to suit himself, and without resort to the King's wishes. He would have known full well that the implications of such a decision would have had far reaching consequences, and he would certainly have deserved the blame he is accredited with now.

ageofnelson.org has recently posted some interesting resources on Nelson and the revolution in Naples

Nelson at Naples by Francis Badham along with rebuttals and defenses
http://www.ageofnelson.org/Article11.html


Captain Foote's vindication of his conduct in the Bay of Naples in the Summer of 1799 by Vice Admiral Sir Edward James Foote criticizing Nelson's actions.
http://www.ageofnelson.org/Document07.html

A NY Times review of Naples in 1799 by Constance Giglioli dated May 30, 1903, which is critical of Nelson.
http://www.ageofnelson.org/Document14.html

Many thanks for those useful links, Bill. Also available on line is Gutteridge's paper on the events at Naples published by the Navy Records Society.

http://www.archive.org/stream/nelsonand ... 7/mode/2up

Perhaps it might be an idea to collate all the comments, links and references on this important and contentious issue on a single 'Naples' thread in the Information Forum to which members can add anything new or interesting they encounter in their reading. I'm horribly pressed at the moment but will get round to it - if anyone has time on their hands, feel free!

There is obviously some bias toward Nelson in all these accounts, and certainly from the latter, Constance Giglioli – where one can almost hear the vitriol pouring off the page about the English, be it Nelson, Emma, or poor old Sir William who gets short shrift and whom she refers to as 'a silly sort of man'. I don't think this forum, or any historian worth his salt, would hold that to be true, so if she is that inaccurate about him what does that say about her perception of the others, including Nelson?

Could it just be that some of this 'fervour' comes from the fact that she is Italian and perhaps from Naples – where I gather that even to this day, many do not countenance Nelson's innocence, but rather paint him as black as possible?

It has been very difficult for anyone interested in Nelson to form any proper judgement about what happened in Naples, firstly, because the events themselves were fast-moving and confused; and secondly, because almost everyone who wrote about it had some ulterior motive. Nearly every source, whether pro- or anti- Nelson, has been tainted by the urge to produce propaganda or defend a person or position rather than to seek the truth with dispassion. I agree that many of the Italian sources are difficult to take seriously because they are so virulent, so selective in their evidence, and, as subsequent research has shown, so cavalier with the truth. This also applies to Marjorie Bowen’s bizarre book which drips with venom and spite. As with John Watkins’ biography of Emma, accounts that are so malicious in tone inhibit one from giving credence to their ‘judgements’.

The bloodshed and cruelty perpetrated in Naples by the Neapolitans themselves were appalling, and, as so often happens, it is useful if a foreign scapegoat can be found to burden with the sins of all. (This is an all-too-human failing that continues to this day: the Dalai Lama was blamed by the Chinese for the Tibetan insurgency; foreign nationals were blamed for acts of terrorism by native supporters of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia; the Nazis blamed Jewish conspiracies for financial chaos in Germany; the Soviets were always blamed for left-wing agitation in the UK; foreigners are credited with having fomented the recent protests in Iran etc. etc. etc.)

It is only in recent years that historians have attempted to unravel the distortions, confusions, deliberate lies and ill-informed misjudgements to try to make a proper analysis, insofar as one can at such a distance and with such a multiplicity and confusion of sources. Andrew Lambert absolves Nelson entirely. His excellent essay on the Black Legend does demonstrate how easy it is for the truth to become tainted and even obliterated by the politically motivated, the personally malicious and even by the well-meaning biographer. Southey was a poet, a man of letters, not an historian, who saw his role as the creation of a hero. To a literary man, enmeshed in literary convention, a hero must have a tragic flaw that mars his perfection. The bloodshed in Naples provided this essential ingredient in a literary biography, intent on creating a character as well as narrating a life.

It has taken 200 years for dispassionate accounts to be written, that neither seek to excuse Nelson entirely nor to load him exclusively with blame. I found Roger Knight’s exposition in his 2005 biography a very fair attempt to explore the whole tragic scenario with coolness and detachment, neither blindly sympathetic nor implacably hostile to Nelson. His narration conveys a sense of the awesome speed at which events moved, and the difficulties confronting Nelson, very different from the challenges he faced as a naval commander, which frayed his nerves and clouded his judgement. Used to making autonomous decisions in a field in which he was master, Nelson was plunged into a confused and confusing political maelstrom, and if he erred, his errors were the result of a man, tried beyond endurance, ill-served by many of those around him, attempting to impose order upon chaos in unfamiliar and extreme circumstances, rather than to give vent to bloodlust. His inflexibility and misjudgements appear to stem from a determination not to lose what control he had over the fluidity of events, and reflect his insecurity and inexperience rather than cruelty. Of course, Knight did not have the benefit of knowing about the recently discovered Ferdinand letter that utterly destroys any claim that Nelson was personally vengeful or acting beyond orders. Nelson’s actions, however bloody the consequences, were in accordance with the specific command of the monarch. Nelson’s loyalty might have been misplaced; but had he not acted as he did in the king’s service, would the outcome have been less bloody, given the mood of the Neapolitan loyalists as well as the King? Though there were later criticisms of his disobedience regarding Keith’s orders to go to Minorca, Nelson had the approval of the Admiralty. Spencer said the news from Naples gives ‘the most sincere pleasure to everyone here’. Blame, if blame is to be apportioned, must be shared by all involved, not least by the Neapolitans themselves.

P.S. I am really looking forward to John Sugden’s assessment in Volume 2 of his biography of Nelson – out next year, I believe.

I disagree, Anna. For a cool, dispassionate analysis of the affair, I think it is hard to beat Mahan's account in his 'Life of Nelson', published in 1897. It admirably meets the above criteria, and I think later additions to the body of evidence do little to invalidate his conclusions.

oops. I haven't actually read Mahan.

I shall make it my business to do so without delay.