than I am, whose business it has been to watch minutely every changing
phase? Or do you think my love of country or glory so incomparably
inferior to yours that I would risk any harm coming to it, or to
myself and the men under me, if I was not sure of my ground? For what
other reason do you think I disobeyed orders? Do you suppose I did it
in order that some disaster should be the result? Or do you still
think that your plan, right or wrong, should have been carried out,
even though it would be accompanied with appalling consequences to
life and property? If these are your views, I wish to remind you that
I am the Indomitable Nelson, who will stand no damned nonsense from
you or from the enemy when I see that my country, or the interests
that I represent, are going to be jeopardized by your self-assertive
instructions, and I wish to intimate to you that there is only one way
of dealing with a Frenchman, and that is to knock him down when he is
an enemy. You have obviously got to learn that to be civil to a
Frenchman is to be laughed at, and this I shall never submit to." The
Admiralty censured Nelson for disobeying Lord Keith's orders and, as
they claimed, endangering Minorca, and also for landing seamen for the
siege of Capua, and told him "not to employ the seamen in any such way
in future." The Admiralty were too hasty in chastising him. He claimed
that his success in freeing the whole kingdom of Naples from the
French was almost wholly due to the employment of British sailors,
whose valour carried the day.

Nelson sent the First Lord a slap between the eyes in his best
sarcastic form. He said briefly, "I cannot enter into all the detail
in explanation of my motives which led me to take the action I did, as
I have only a left hand, but I may inform you that my object is to
drive the French to the devil, and restore peace and happiness to
mankind"; and he continues, "I feel I am fitter to do the action than