608. Nelson: Slaughter in Naples (Part 1)

15:37Tom Holland:And one of the kind of the attitudes, the shows that Emma Hamilton puts on is to dress up as one of the urban poor and do a native dance. That's so tasteful. Oh, that's lovely.

15:50Dominic Sandbrook:That reflects so well on her, Tom.

15:52Tom Holland:Well, the Queen loves it and the people love their Queen.

15:55Dominic Sandbrook:All the rich people love it, no doubt. The people love their queen. But here's the thing. These people do love the king and queen. They are very, very pro-monarchy. They are very, frankly, very reactionary. They're the kind of the populists of the streets. So you've got this sort of tension. This is the cauldron seething with tension. It's bubbling over. It's bubbling. It is. Well, not quite bubbling, but it's simmering. Into which Nelson arrives in September 1798. Now, as we described last time, when the vanguard is towed into the harbour, The city is already celebrating. And the reason it's celebrating is that Naples has lived in the shadow of the possibility of a French attack.

16:34Dominic Sandbrook:Because the French have, since the late 1790s, they've been pouring through Italy. They have taken Rome quite recently. Yeah, just earlier in the year, wasn't it? Yeah. And the Neapolitans are frightened that the French will keep going. And they see Nelson, therefore, as their great liberator.

16:52Tom Holland:But there is a problem here for the king and queen, which is obviously they're pro-British. They want to give Nelson the warmest welcome they possibly can, but officially they're neutral. And if they openly celebrate Nelson, then that might be a kind of casus belli. And this, I think, is where Emma comes in, because she can celebrate Nelson because she herself is British. And her association with the king and queen make it clear that she is kind of speaking for them. And so she organizes this great fiesta. She parades Nelson through the streets in a carriage and all the crowds go wild for him.

17:30Tom Holland:And really the king and queen thereby are enabled to have the best of both worlds. They celebrate Nelson, but they don't piss off the French.

17:36Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, although they're pretty blatant themselves. So Ferdinand and Maria Carolina actually greeted Nelson in the harbour and came for breakfast. They had a big breakfast. But it's not public. I mean, it's not public. No, in private, I guess. But the crowds, they're shouting, Viva Nelson, Nostro Liberatore. There are banquets and balls. And of all these balls, which are enormous by Neapolitan standards, the most famous is thrown inevitably over the Hamiltons themselves. So just to remind people, if there's anybody who didn't listen to our last episode, Sir William Hamilton is 67 years old. He's this kind of tall, beaky, cerebral, sophisticated, detached, ironic character who's been Britain's man in Naples for, what, almost 30 years?

18:19Dominic Sandbrook:And Emma, 34, as you said, she is a former prostitute. She's come from an excruciatingly poor and deprived background. And she has advanced thanks to her charisma and her charm and her sense of glamour, I guess. The excitement that surrounds her. She's a celebrity. She is. She's an international celebrity. Like Nelson, of course. Yes. Well, we'll see. There are definite similarities. So they throw, for example, a massive party for his birthday. thousands of guests, special crockery decorated with Nelson's monogram. There's this sort of great sense of excitement, and Emma throws herself into this.

19:01Dominic Sandbrook:So she dresses up in a kind of Nelson-themed outfit. Themed costume, doesn't she? Yeah. And it is very clear that this, I think, you know, Nelson always, let's be frank, we're great fans of Nelson, but Nelson is far from perfect. So Nelson always had a susceptibility to flattery and a thirst, an insatiable thirst for attention. And for somebody who has just been on this incredibly grueling mission, chasing the fleet across the Mediterranean, then the drama and excitement of the Battle of the Nile, the enemy ship, Lorient, exploding in front of him, hundreds of people being killed, all of this.

19:43Dominic Sandbrook:He's still got concussion by some accounts. You know, he has been hit in the head, hasn't he, by air?

19:48Tom Holland:Yeah, so he's got a great chunk of his scalp is missing. He's got kind of a bit of flying metal hit it.

19:53Dominic Sandbrook:So if you imagine psychologically, right, he arrives in this city, very exciting place. He's greeted by these very glamorous people. He's taken to balls and parties that are all about him. His head is kind of whirling the whole time. And it does, I think, slightly go to his head. I mean, he admits this himself. He says, it was the most distinguished reception that ever, I believe, fell to the lot of any human being. that's quite a big thing to say of yourself. He wrote to his father at one point and said, it is enough to make me vain. And I think there's a degree of self-knowledge there. There is.

20:29Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, he's pretty vain, even before it started. But he's also getting presents and things from foreign monarchs. The most famous is the thing called the Shilling, sent to him by the Ottoman Sultan. Well, I mean, let's be honest.

20:41Tom Holland:He loves bling as well as attention. and the more medals, the more sashes, the more kind of gaudy bits of jewellery that he can attach to his hat, the better. And I do think, so you quoted him writing to his father, who is a vicar, who lives in a chilly rectory in Norfolk. It's basically the opposite of celebrating a victory in Naples with a glamorous international celebrity. And I think that that contrast kind of subliminally is working away in Nelson's mind. And of course, in the long run, it will affect his attitude, not just to his father and to the place that he grew up, but to his wife, Fanny, who is also in this cold and chilly Norfolk rectory.

21:27Dominic Sandbrook:I think that's dead right. I think there's a slight sense here. And here, you know, I think Leicesters can make their own minds up because biographers have done the same. So biographers are perhaps a little bit more critical of Nelson and of Emma, suggest that at this point, there's a kind of dizziness almost, that his head is ringing anyway when he turns up in the harbour, but slightly begins to be turned. Anyway, clearly the key figures in his relationship with Naples are the Hamiltons. So Sir William Hamilton, it's definitely not the ideal point in Sir William Hamilton's career for Nelson to have arrived.

21:58Dominic Sandbrook:Sir William Hamilton is quite old at this point. There's a sense in which he has gone native a little bit. So his loyalties are slightly divided between those to Britain and those to the Neapolitan court to which he's so close. You don't think he would argue that they're indistinguishable,

22:14Tom Holland:that Naples is the last, you know, I mean, it's the last major power in the Mediterranean allied to Britain. And so therefore it's essential to prop them up. And actually the Admiralty agrees with this. I mean, this is definitely British policy.

22:28Dominic Sandbrook:He would definitely make that case. And there is an element of truth in it. And yet I think if you're any diplomat will tell you, You always have to understand that it's a complicated dance, isn't it, between your superiors in London and the people that you are, especially if, as in this case, the guy who's the king is an absolute buffoon and his wife has very pronounced vested interest and the city's a tinderbox, as we have already established.

22:56Tom Holland:And if the king's wife, the queen, is best friends with your own wife, which is the state of play with William and Emma Hamilton, because Emma and the Queen are absolute besties at this point.

23:08Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly, exactly. And I think what's obvious from the very beginning is that for completely understandable reasons, Nelson is besotted with the Hamiltons. I think Nelson has always, and it's not just Emma, it's Sir William as well, I think, because I think Nelson has always been somebody, perhaps because his own father, you know, it's clear that you don't think that highly of the Reverend Nelson.

23:31Tom Holland:No, I do. I mean, I love, you know, I love a vicar, But there's a contrast between a vicar in a Chile rectory and a glamorous and faintly cynical aristocrat who collects erotic friezes from buried Roman cities.

23:46Dominic Sandbrook:But Nelson has always craved father figures, hasn't he? He's had them all his life, especially in the Navy. Captain Locker, Admiral Hood, Sir John Jervis. He loves a very self-confident, impressive, older man who takes him under his wing. And he wants that man to love him. And William Hamilton, despite everything that is going to happen, he is devoted to Nelson, which people find very odd in due course.

24:17Tom Holland:But his devotion to Nelson, I think, is absolutely genuine. Although he's not as devoted as his wife.

24:24Dominic Sandbrook:That's true. That's so true. So Emma Hamilton, as we've said, a celebrity. She is a very, very glamorous and sexy woman. And she's close to age in Nelson. Well, he's 40. She's in her early to mid-30s. And she makes a huge fuss. I mean, she had fallen into his arms in a sort of mock faint or a real faint when he arrived in the harbour. Oh, God, is it possible? You're alive, all this kind of thing. and then when they install him in their house, the Palazzo Sessa, and she makes a great fuss of him, she tends to his wounds, she cuts up his food because, of course, he's only got one arm, she pours his wine, she tells everybody, look what a great man he is, all of this kind of thing.

25:08Dominic Sandbrook:I think you would, almost anybody, would have found that very, very flattering. But if you are somebody like Nelson who, you know, he's been, First of all, he's been at sea for months with no female company. He loves attention. You know, he always has thought that he's a star and he's always had this slight sense, oh, I haven't had the respect that I deserve. Why would this not go to your head? Of course it goes to his head, I think, a little bit.

25:35Tom Holland:There's probably no one in Europe better qualified to give him exactly what he wants in terms of adulation. because Emma, the reason that she's an international star, she has these attitudes which you think are ludicrous. But I mean, basically the point of them is that they bring to life classical statuary or friezes or whatever, and people are stunned by it. So Emma is very, very good at bringing to life scenes from kind of antique heroism and giving it a kind of massive histrionic charge. and you cannot imagine anything better suited to Nelson's taste because all his Christmas is coming at once.

26:15Tom Holland:Not only is he being celebrated as a hero, but he's being celebrated as a hero in the most dramatic and up-to-date manner possible by probably the most famous woman in Europe

26:26Dominic Sandbrook:and his cup overflows. And not merely that, but actually there is no place in Europe that is better suited to be the backdrop for a kind of theatrical spectacle. and Nelson has always regarded himself to some degree as a character on a stage, you know, maybe playing a classical hero or whatever. And here he is in Naples, in the shadow of Vesuvius.

26:46Tom Holland:With this fabulously attractive and famous woman who, so a kind of sample of the way that she addresses him. Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, immortalized Nelson. This is how she talks to him all the time. And it has to be said, this is not how Fanny back in Norfolk is accustomed to address her husband.

27:08Dominic Sandbrook:Should I tell you something, Tom? This is actually what Theo, this is how Theo addresses me behind your back. Yeah, well, I know you were clearly the Emma. I am the Fanny. Now, here's the funny thing. I think in some ways, Nelson is oblivious to the possible implications of this because there is a kind of boyish innocence to him. And the proof of that. Do you think? I do because I think he writes to Fanny and he is so tactlessly open about his relationship with the Hamiltons. Yeah, she's great. I've met this girl. She's brilliant. Well, this is the thing. He tells the story about Emma falling into his arms in the harbour.

27:49Dominic Sandbrook:He tells that to Fanny in a letter to Fanny. He says, I cannot wait to introduce you to this woman, Emma Hamilton. She's one of the very best women in the world. How few could have made the turn she has. By the turn, he means the progress, the self-improvement. She's an honour to her sex. Her kindness with Sir William to me is more than I can express. Now, I think if you're planning to have an affair with somebody. I completely agree. You don't write that to your wife.

28:13Tom Holland:At this point, absolutely he isn't. But I mean, Nelson is not an innocent. I mean, he's been conducting an affair with a woman in Livorno up in the north of Italy for four years.

28:23Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, but you can be a man of flesh and blood and yet have this slight, you cannot sense what's coming. I don't think he senses what's coming.

28:31Tom Holland:Yeah, I mean, I think at this point, the appeal of Emma is that she is saying he's brilliant. Yes. She's just going on and on about how wonderful you are, you're a hero and all of that. That's the focus. But I wouldn't say that, you know, oh, he's kind of innocent. You know, he is at this point, to reiterate, having an affair.

28:48Dominic Sandbrook:But he is more innocent than he might be, I would say. I don't think he has any agenda here. so anyway there's the issue obviously his wife fanny when she gets these letters is not it's just not exactly over the moon but there's also a kind of political dimension to this because as we've said sir william and emma are incredibly close to the royal couple and that means that nelson who has always been a massive sucker for royalty because listeners will remember in the previous series he massively sucked up to the future william the fourth who was a very boorish bloke in a way that did not endear him to his superiors at the Admiralty.

29:26Tom Holland:And I think that's another point of correspondence with Emma, who's kind of very much the working class Tory, loves a king and a queen, especially a queen. And Nelson, obviously, instinctively, that those are his politics as well, I think.

29:39Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I think so. So what that means is that when he gets wind of a Neapolitan plan, a new sort of departure in the war, he is perhaps not as sceptical as he might otherwise have been. So this plan comes really from Maria Carolina. Remember, she hates the French. Now that the Neapolitan's have heard the news of the defeat of Napoleon's fleet in Egypt, they say, gosh, couldn't we launch a counterattack against the French in Italy? Basically, what Maria Carolina wants to do is to send Naples's army north to drive the French out of Rome, which they're captured in, what is it, February, I think it was, and then push on into Tuscany.

30:20Dominic Sandbrook:And if they can get into Tuscany, then her family in Austria, the Habsburgs, may well look at this, this is what she's hoping, and rejoin the war, and that will allow them to avenge Marie Antoinette together. I mean, I think this is the great gamble that Nelson takes,

30:37Tom Holland:really, isn't it, is that he has to weigh up, will Austria come into the war? Yeah. And I think it's not mad to think that they would. Because, you know, Maria Carolina is herself Austrian. The Austrian royal family have every reason to hate the French. And the prospect of crushing the French between the two flanks. I mean, this is what Nelson loves to do. It's basically what he'd done at the Battle of the Nile. So you can see why it would appeal to him.

31:03Dominic Sandbrook:The one thing I will say, though, about Nelson, though, Tom, is that Nelson at sea is unbeatable. Nelson on land is always a fiasco. Nelson is a very poor judge of military stuff on land. And the issue is also Naples has no real military tradition. It has no history of winning land battles. But it does have an Austrian general, doesn't it? It does. And it has an excellent history of exciting, colourful military uniforms. But as we discovered in our series about the First World War, the more colourful the uniform, usually the worse the army. Anyway, there's a couple of other things. So kicking the French out of Italy has long been a really important British war aim.

31:48Dominic Sandbrook:So you could see why he likes that. He wants to please the Hamiltons. He wants to please the King and Queen. And he has new orders from London. And the new orders from London, this reinforces something you were saying earlier. He must give the most cordial and unlimited protection to the King and Queen of Naples and, on a quote, most carefully avoid giving them the smallest cause for suspicion, jealousy, or offence. And the irony of this is the Admiralty have sent him these orders because they think Nelson can be proud and tactless and that he might offend the Neapolitan monarchy. What they don't realise is that he will go to the completely opposite extreme and he will align himself completely with them.

32:28Tom Holland:Well, it's a reminder of just how far Nelson is from London. And it takes a long time for messages to travel from, say, Naples back to Britain and vice versa. So Nelson really is on his own here. And as you said, when it comes to geopolitics and land wars, he is much less confident than he is at sea. On the naval campaign, there is one further issue, which is that Malta is occupied by the French and Nelson is conducting a blockade of Malta because he can see that strategically that will be key as well. Because if they can roll the French out of Italy and secure Malta, then that will absolutely set Britain's mastery of the Mediterranean on very, very solid foundations.

33:14Dominic Sandbrook:The upshot of this is that Sir William Hamilton, Emma Hamilton are super keen on this expedition. Nelson is very keen on it. Yes, this is the time to strike. Let's do this. So by early October 1798, the preparations are in full swing. The Austrians have sent them a general to command the army, who is General Mack. They have mustered more than 30 ,000 men in very fancy new uniforms. There's a great scene when Maria Carolina, like kind of Elizabeth at Tilbury, rides out to inspire them. She's all dressed up as well. Nelson thinks he's great. Oh, yeah. He writes to Fanny and says, oh, she is a great king.

33:53Dominic Sandbrook:And he also writes to London and says, these are the finest troops in Europe. so we will see so in fact a lot of these people by the way they're peasants from the Italian countryside who've actually never held a musket before so we'll see how that works out for them anyway on the 22nd of November in driving rain this army marches out of Naples on the road that leads north and ahead is Rome and ahead is the most controversial episode of Nelson's life

34:23Tom Holland:brilliant what a cliffhanger and we will find out whether the Neapolitan forces sweep the French back into France, or whether they don't after the break.

34:37Tom Holland:This episode is brought to you by Vanguard. Now, thrillingly, this name, Vanguard, was inspired by HMS Vanguard, the flagship of none other than Admiral Nelson.

34:49Dominic Sandbrook:He pursues the French to Abakir Bay on the shores of Egypt for the Battle of the Nile and save the world from Napoleon, really. So great scenes.

34:58Tom Holland:So tremendous record there from Vanguard, a ship that certainly saw no lack of action.

35:04Dominic Sandbrook:Yes. Now, speaking of action, if you want to put your financial plans into action, but you've been putting off sorting out your ISA or if you're new to investing and you don't know where to start, Vanguard offers a range of ISA options, including their managed ISA, which could be a great fit.

35:23Tom Holland:So essentially, it's a stocks and shares ISA, but it is managed by the experts of Vanguard. They'll help you to work out your risk appetite, match you to an investment plan that is right for you, and then they will do the rest. Search Vanguard to find out more. When investing, your capital is at risk. Tax rules apply.

35:49Tom Holland:Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. And it is November 1798. The army of Naples, in their splendid uniforms, have marched north to Rome. They've been encouraged by Nelson, by his new pals, the Hamiltons. And the way we set it up, Dominic, before the break, People might think it's going to be a complete fiasco, but actually, initially it isn't. So they trudge through the rain, trudge through the mud, they reach the outskirts of Rome, and they find that the French have basically melted away. They're nowhere to be seen. And so on the 29th of November, absolute scenes. King Ferdinand, this boorish oaf who basically all he's interested in is making footmen eat frogs and going hunting.

36:33Tom Holland:He rides into Rome in triumph, and he's saluted across Europe as the new Caesar. So the British ambassador in Russia describes him as manly and vigorous, which I don't think he's ever been described as before. And he has a week to celebrate. And then on the 7th of December, oh dear, France declares war on Naples. And what happens then?

36:54Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, nothing good, unfortunately. So the very next day, King Ferdinand, who's been celebrating, here's the news that a French army is marching on Rome. And of course, they have been waiting, thinking, well, maybe the Austrians will pile in. But the Austrians don't, do they? The Austrians completely let them down. I think it's harsh to blame the Austrians for this. I mean, I think the finger of blame points very squarely at King Ferdinand and the Neapolitan army. Because the first thing he does when he hears news that the French are coming, he immediately summons his carriage, leaps into his carriage.

37:24Tom Holland:I'm out of here.

37:25Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, let's go back to Naples. And Naples, great banter. People said he came, he saw, He fled, which is basically exactly what he did. Now, as for the Neapolitan army, the finest troops in Europe, according to Horatio Nelson, they collapsed within hours, some units within minutes. Yeah.

37:46Tom Holland:Well, you know what Nelson said in the wake of this collapse? He'd been bigging them up before. Now, he says, the Neapolitan officers have not lost much honour, for God knows they had but little to lose.

37:57Dominic Sandbrook:God, he's changed. He's changed soon, hasn't he? Yeah, because a lot of them didn't even fire a shot. They ran away straight away. They left all their artillery behind. They left their guns behind. They left their baggage behind. I mean, the French claim this is a great military victory, but to be honest, they're not really fighting anybody because they've all run away.

38:13Tom Holland:I'm not criticizing them. I'd run away as well.

38:15Dominic Sandbrook:Right. Well, okay. So in the next two weeks, the French just keep coming, obviously. They retake Rome. They continue south. So we get to Christmas, 1798. Christmas is coming, and the French are basically marching now on Naples. Now, we describe Naples as a tinderbox. And the match or whatever it is, the bit that is struck has been struck. Even though it's raining. Right, exactly. So Naples is now in, I mean, it was pretty chaotic before. It's now an absolute, utter unbridled chaos. The city is crowded with refugees. The local kind of do-gooders, the bien-pensants, the enlightened liberal metropolitan elite.

39:00Dominic Sandbrook:The Jacobins, they're called. The Jacobins.

39:02Tom Holland:They're cock-a-hoop. And Maria Carolina, I mean, if you're the sister of Marie Antoinette, you kind of know how this ends, right?

39:08Dominic Sandbrook:So they're holed up in the Royal Palace at Capodimonte, Ferdinand and Maria Carolina. He's, you know, gone rampaging around with his chamber pots, like in a massive state. She, with her husky voice, is kind of taking refuge. Oh no, I'm going to have my head chopped off. Yeah, under the bed, like thinking that she's going to turn out like Marie Antoinette. outside in the streets, there are kind of rival gangs and mobs fighting. The pillaging and burning has already started. It's a real kind of end of the world kind of scene. And the climax comes, I mean, why is there no great film of this? The climax comes on Christmas Eve.

39:50Dominic Sandbrook:The king and queen arrange this lavish banquet, but this has been done to distract people. It's a cover, isn't it? It's a cover. because actually they've decided that they will flee to the second capital of the kingdom of the two Sicilies, which is in the real Sicily, which is Palermo. That's confusing, isn't it? The thing is they don't trust their own ships to take them because there have been rumours, they've heard reports, that Republican ideas have been sweeping through the crews. None of that nonsense in the Royal Navy. Not at all. The person they want to take them is Horatio Nelson. Now remember, not only is he close to them because of the Hamiltons, He's close to them because he's been told by the Admiralty, do not under any circumstances let them down at all.

40:33Dominic Sandbrook:So he says, fine, I'll take you, and I'll take as much of the royal treasure as you can carry. And so as night falls on Christmas Eve, they kind of scuttle down to the harbour with their bodyguards. Emma Hamilton comes with them. She's in charge of escorting the royal treasure. And Sir William Hamilton is kind of his hand. He's got all his vases. His erotic vases and whatever.

40:56Tom Holland:and the boats that are sent to pick him up are commanded by somebody who will be featuring later in this series who is Nelson's flag captain so on board the vanguard a man called Thomas Hardy an enormous man isn't he an enormous kind of balding man he likes flocking people well he does and we'll come to this so he takes them all back and the king and queen take Nelson's cabin on board the vanguard and the Hamiltons take Hardy's and off the ship glides into the darkness. And as they go, they can see flames rising from the shore behind them. And it's not coming from Mount Vesuvius. It's coming from the city that is increasingly ablaze.

41:39Dominic Sandbrook:It's like the scene from, if people are familiar with The Godfather Part II, there's a scene when Al Pacino has to flee Cuba in the Cuban Revolution. And it's this similar sort of atmosphere, kind of the streets full of people, this sense of panic and whatnot. Anyway, things don't get any better for them, do they? Because the next day, Christmas Day, they're in the Bay of Naples and there's a colossal storm. Now, of course, Nelson is used to storms, but his passengers are not. So William Hamilton says, I'm not going to drown. And he retires to his cabin with a loaded pistol and says, I'll blow up my brains rather than sink to the deep.

42:18Tom Holland:Isn't there one of the ambassadors who's going with them? He has a kind of erotic portrait of his mistress, and he's so worried that he'll drown and go to meet his maker that he throws it overboard, much to his later regret.

42:29Dominic Sandbrook:That's a very poor choice of action in a storm. Now, the other thing is the royal couple have their youngest son, Prince Carlo Albert, is nine years old, and he's terrified by the storm. And this is a terrible story, actually. He goes into a fit, doesn't he? A kind of convulsive fit that goes on for hours. And he dies in Emma Hamilton's arms. So she's trying to comfort him because she's so close to the family. And she's regarded, I'm not always the most pro-Emma commentator, but she is regarded as having behaved very well. She doesn't lose her composure. She behaves absolutely splendidly.

43:09Tom Holland:She'll like quote Kate Williams. Refusing to let the experience of being sick defeat her or to droop under the atmosphere of panic, she tried to comfort peevish courtiers who had never known hardship and struggled to keep some kind of order in the rolling ship. And I think you do get there a glimpse of what Nelson admires about her. You know, she is a woman for a crisis. She has spirit, Tom. She has balls.

43:32Dominic Sandbrook:She has spunk, doesn't she? She does. She absolutely does. Right. So they survive. they endure the storm. The next day through the rain, they see Palermo, the kind of domes and the churches and the palazzi and whatnot. Now, if Naples was sort of glamorous, exotic, a little bit dilapidated, Palermo is all these things on steroids. So even as they disembark, there's these huge crowds of beggars and whatnot. And here in Palermo, they will stay for the next five months.

44:08Tom Holland:And they're kind of secure, aren't they? Because as long as the Royal Navy maintains

44:12Dominic Sandbrook:command of the seas, the French can't get to Sicily. Exactly. So it is kind of a flight from Varennes, which Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette attempted and

44:22Tom Holland:were foiled. The Neapolitan royals, they get away. And in fact, what subsequently happens may give us perhaps a flavour of what might have happened in France had the flight to Varennes continued and the King and Queen got away.

44:35Dominic Sandbrook:Well, we'll come back to what happens in Naples because that's very colourful. But let's just look at Nelson. So Nelson and the Hamiltons move in together into a Palermo Palace called the Palazzo Palagonia.

44:48Tom Holland:And it has erotic freezes all over the ceilings, showing Zeus getting up to his business.

44:54Dominic Sandbrook:Of course it does. So Nelson is, I mean, we're going to say this sentence about 400 times in this series. Nelson is absolutely shattered. He is mentally and physically exhausted. His letters home are full of complaints, basically about his poor mental health. And his bowels. Yeah, he's not a well man.

45:16Tom Holland:Yeah, so his mind and his bowels are both shot.

45:20Dominic Sandbrook:There's a sort of sense, I think, when you sort of read the Nelson biographies by the John Sugden and Roger Knight and whatnot, I think there's a sense that Nelson is, you know, is he depressed? Is he suffering from PTSD? I mean, maybe this is trying to impose modern labels onto somebody in the past, which is a bad idea. But when you look at his letters, he writes to a friend of his called Lady Parker. You who remember me always laughing and gay would hardly believe the change. But who can see what I have and be well in health? And then to Fanny. My health is tolerable, but my mind is full of sorrow.

45:57Dominic Sandbrook:Not for myself, for I care not, but for my country and the world. And obviously, it's been a terrible embarrassment and disappointment to him that the Neapolitan army has behaved so badly and they've had to scuttle back to Palermo. But also the fact, I think, that it comes so soon after the Battle of the Nile, his great triumph. If you were to plot his mental state on a graph, it'd be all over the place, up and down.

46:21Tom Holland:Well, I think also he feels isolated and alone. He's a long way from London and he's acting commander in chief in the Mediterranean. And there are all these terrible decisions he has to make. without really anyone to advise him.

46:34Dominic Sandbrook:Well, you say without really anyone.

46:36Tom Holland:Well, he does, of course. There are the Hamiltons. And it's probably around now, say the first months of 1799, that he finds in Emma an increasing source, not just of advice, but of comfort. Comfort, yeah. And what I think gives the game away is that he starts buying her props for her attitudes. That is such a bad sign, I have to say. And it's not long before both of them are kind of mooning over one another, giving each other pet names. You do it. No, you do it. No, you do it. All that kind of stuff. Oh, God. And there's obviously kind of a very intense physical attraction. But I do think also, we've touched on this before, they have very similar personalities.

47:28Tom Holland:They're both very charismatic. They're both very famous. They're both very histrionic. They're both very prone to depression, but they are also very determined, bold, aggressive, I think, in their kind of instincts. And you can see why they get on. And above all, the reason that Nelson thinks Emma is brilliant is that Emma thinks Nelson is brilliant. So you said how Nelson's disappointed that he isn't made a Viscount. So she writes to him and says, if I was king of England, I would make you the most noble puissant, Duke Nelson, Marquess Nile, Earl Alexander, Viscount Pyramid, Baron Crocodile and Prince Victory, that posterity might have you in all forms.

48:11Tom Holland:You could see why this would appeal to someone who is always hungry for recognition and praise.

48:16Dominic Sandbrook:I think there are a couple of things. I think one of them is they both crave attention and they crave attention from other talented and driven people. So I think that's part of it. they feed that. I think both of them feed in each other something else, which you might say is a little bit darker, which is a sense, oh, the world is against me. And there's Nelson has always had a strain of self pity. Hasn't he? There's always been a side of him that falls out with, um, superiors at the Admiralty or whatever, because he thinks he isn't getting his due. And Emma, I think is the kind of partner, you know, there's the kind of partner who says to you now, come on, put this into perspective, you know, calm down.

48:56Dominic Sandbrook:You're brilliant. But she is the kind of partner who says, you're totally right. They should be festooning you with honours. You know, all of this. And she will always, always do that to him and him to her. And they both love it. It's what they want more than anything, I would say.

49:12Tom Holland:And she, of course, has had a very hard life. I mean, you know, hard beyond Nelson's wildest dreams. And again, I think he respects what she's made of herself.

49:20Dominic Sandbrook:Well, he mentioned the turn, didn't he? The turn she's made in his letter to Fanny. So quite early on, there are rumours and whispers in the fleet. So on the 16th of January, so they'd only been in Palermo for, what, three weeks? Another British captain called George Hope left Palermo on the Alkmeni, and he went to Gibraltar. And when he got to Gibraltar, he said to other officers, Nelson is idling in Palermo and making himself ridiculous with Lady Hamilton. Now, at about the same time, a slightly baleful figure in Nelson's life, Admiral Lord Keith, who is an absolutely textbook casting agency, formidable Scotsman.

50:03Dominic Sandbrook:Not the kind who would be impressed by Emma's attitudes. Not at all. He arrives in Gibraltar and he writes home to his sister and he says, everybody says Nelson is cutting the most absurd figure possible for folly and vanity. There's a French officer called Damat who's actually serving the Neapolitans, confusingly, and he writes around the same time. Nelson's officers are increasingly mortified and disgusted by his behavior with the Hamiltons. Now, the question which historians, biographers grapple with, which I think Tom and I probably have different opinions about, and indeed, Nelson's officers and comrades had different opinions at the time, is how much is this people projecting a kind of misogyny and a snobbery onto the Nelson-Emma relationship?

50:48Dominic Sandbrook:And how much is it his genuinely slightly nauseating, mooning and showing off and victimhood and blah, blah, blah.

50:56Tom Holland:I think there is definitely a strong vein of misogyny here. So to look at Keith, Keith is arriving to take Nelson's place as commander in chief. There are going to be disagreements over Nelson's strategy. Nelson has based himself in Palermo because he sees it as a launch pad for reconquering Naples and for maintaining the blockade of Malta. Keith doesn't think that this is a valid reason. So there is a kind of deep seated strategic disagreement there. But it's easier for Keith to cast Nelson's reasons for being in Palermo that he's kind of playing Antony to Emma's Cleopatra. And it's turbocharged, I think, by what we were talking about earlier, this idea that Naples and Italy and Palermo are like kind of whores seducing honest British Tars and corrupting them.

51:48Tom Holland:and actually the very idea of Parthenope, the siren, kind of luring sailors onto the rocks. I think that all of this is kind of bubbling away and in a sense it becomes easier for both Nelson's critics and his admirers in the Royal Navy to blame Emma for this, which casts Nelson himself as a very supine figure, ludicrously supine, rather than engage the fact that actually this is about issues of strategy and questioning Nelson's judgment as a naval and military figure.

52:22Dominic Sandbrook:But a quick counter-argument, and I know we don't want to get massively bogged down in this, but one might be, you might say, they don't just blame Emma. So actually a lot of this is about blaming Nelson himself. So I think there is probably a degree, I mean, there's no doubt there's a degree of misogyny and snobbery in the way that people talk about Emma. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no kernel of truth in this as well, and that perhaps Nelson is slightly, you know, the mooning and whatnot. Maybe that is slightly embarrassing for a lot of his comrades. I think the other thing is that it's not just about, I mean, clearly, Emma begins to undermine the idea of the band of brothers that has been so important to Nelson.

53:06Dominic Sandbrook:She is Yoko to the Beatles. I knew that comparison was coming. Before I even embarked on the research for this, I knew. I've been very predictable in this episode. But I think what she stands for, which is a kind of showiness. I mean, obviously the attitudes are about show and about spectacle and whatnot. That for some of these people who are ingrained in the values of the service, duty, responsibility, you know, I was going to say sobriety. That's not really the right word for the Royal Navy. But you know what I mean.

53:36Tom Holland:Well, there's a very interesting episode. and you talked about Captain Hardy. He's a great flogger at maintaining discipline. Emma has a reputation among the seaman, the common seaman, as someone who is a woman of compassion who can be appealed to. And there are men who are condemned by Hardy to be flogged. They appeal to Emma and Hardy then flogs them twice, both for the original crime and because they appealed over his head to Emma Hamilton. And you can see exactly why that would

54:07Dominic Sandbrook:infuriate nelson's captains yeah it's that thing if you've read anyone who's read the master and commander books the patrick o 'brien books there is nothing more destabilizing to a ship they a lot of people argue that when you have a very glamorous attractive woman on board and it turns some people's heads and it starts to mess with the chain of command and all of this kind of thing there's that there's also something else you alluded to earlier which is nelson's love of bling and i think there's a sense that some people think nelson is starting to become a little bit un-british A little bit Italian.

54:37Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, he's hanging around with Italians. He's got this massive feathered ornament in his hat sent to him by the Sultan, all of this sort of stuff. Now, has Nelson therefore completely lost the plot? I think that would be very harsh. As Andrew Lambert says in his biography, Nelson is exhausted. He may well still have concussion. he has been through this military trial in the battle of the nile and the chase that if it happened today you know anyone who had been through it you would say gosh they must have ptsd they must have this that and the other they've so probably he is a bit dizzy as it were kind of morally and intellectually and emotionally dizzy and that's not necessarily surprising but also

55:22Tom Holland:he's failed because he had backed this, the, the Napolitans to attack Rome. And now that seems to have collapsed. And it looks as though everything he'd been trying to do with the stabilization of Italy is, is, you know, his ashes. And that must make, I mean, that's terrible for him. He's now got Admiral Keith turning up, whose, whose talent for man management isn't all it could be. I think making him feel a failure. And he, you know, in Palermo, he doesn't really have a kind of secretariat. He doesn't have people on hand who he can turn to. So I can entirely understand the degree of pressure that he's under.

55:57Dominic Sandbrook:Tom is very much, you know, Nelson would love you, Tom. You don't like to hear a word against Nelson.

56:03Tom Holland:Well, we are approaching the most controversial episode in Nelson's career. And I will have things to say about that. But I do, I generally feel, I mean, the reason why Nelson is such a remarkable figure is that firstly, he is genuinely heroic, brilliant admiral. He never lets up on that. And secondly, I think he is genuinely a man of honour. And what happens in Italy is a drag on that reputation. He starts to betray his wife, but also he gets led by the swirl of Italian power politics into a whirlpool that doesn't leave him looking quite as honourable as I think in the main he tends to be.

56:48Dominic Sandbrook:Okay, well, let's get into this. So what's been going on in Naples while he's been swanning around in Palermo with Emma? The French have occupied the city. They've cracked down on the Lazzaroni. They've abolished the monarchy. They've set up a new Parthenopian republic run by the poets and writers and whatnot, the so-called Jacobin. As we said, this is an elite from a quite a narrow social group. So intellectuals, people who are Freemasons, people who are merchants. The majority of the Neapolitan population are very Catholic, quite small-c conservative, and monarchist. And outside the city, this new regime has very little support at all.

57:29Dominic Sandbrook:And there are immediately rebellions all over rural Calabria. Now, Now, King Ferdinand, seething in his sort of oafish way in Palermo, thinks brilliant. And he sends an agent to lead this fight back. And this guy is a former treasurer to the papacy in his 50s called Cardinal Ruffo. Ruffo has never commanded an army before, but he's a smart guy. He knows what he's doing. He lands on the mainland in early February. He raises the standard of the Holy Cross. He says, come on, fight for your church, fight for your king. And he recruits 20 ,000 volunteers who are called the soldiers of the army of the holy faith.

58:09Dominic Sandbrook:And these are the Sanfedisti. And these are, I think, riffraff is probably the most generous way to refer to them. They are kind of ruffians. Sufo's riffraff. Yeah, they're kind of bandits, criminals and whatnot. And they're like, great. All restraints are off. We're going to enjoy this. they advance through Calabria when they get into a town they take town after town they will loot and pillage they lynch people they find somebody who kind of speaks French who's a Freemason who's got Republican or Reformist sympathies string them up string them up exactly if they basically if they can't find them they'll string some other people up anyway just for the fun of it

58:52Tom Holland:and Cardinal Ruffo is I mean he's very upset about this but there's not a lot he can do there's nothing he can do because his riffraff a riffraffing

59:01Dominic Sandbrook:They're not going to listen to him. Anyway, by the beginning of May 1799, they pretty much surrounded Naples. This republic is clearly doomed. The French troops, the French garrison, they hole up in the Castel Sant Elmo, which overlooks the city. And the so-called Jacobin, they hole up in two other castles on the waterfront, the Castel del Ovo and the Castel Nuovo. And basically, they know if the Sanfordisti get into the city and get a hold of us, they will literally tear us to pieces. Cardinal Ruffo, to his credit, is like, I don't really want to see the city destroyed. I don't want a massive bloodbath.

59:38Dominic Sandbrook:And to cut a very long and incredibly complicated story short, he effectively wants to do a deal with the Jacobins. They'll surrender. They'll come out of the castles. We'll put them on boats in the harbour, and they can go off to Toulon, France, and we'll be rid of them forever, and there won't be any more killing. And Ferdinand and Maria Carolina clearly do not like this idea. because it's really important to them that the ringleaders in particular are punished, that they cannot be allowed to get away scot-free.

1:00:08Tom Holland:And particularly those who they feel have personally betrayed them. Yeah. And there's a kind of a representative figure of that class of person, who's a guy called Francesco Caracciolo. And he's an aristocrat from Naples who had actually served with the Royal Navy, both against the Americans in the War of Independence, in the Napoleonic Wars. and he had helped to escort the royal family from Naples to Palermo, had then gone back to Palermo and had joined the revolution. So he's a kind of representative of the kind of man that the king and queen are desperate to see punished.

1:00:42Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. Now they want somebody to handle this personally because they don't trust Rufo to do it. And so on the 10th of June, King Ferdinand asks Nelson, can you sail back to Naples, please? supervise the retaking of the city and handle this issue of the Jacobin in these castles now Nelson has a choice to make here but his orders from London to be fair to him are pretty clear you know give the king and queen what protection they need and to repeat avoid giving them the smallest cause for suspicion jealousy or offense so two days later he sets off for Palermo with a small army. Now, while he's sailing, Naples descends into total and utter chaos.

1:01:27Dominic Sandbrook:Rufo's army break into the city. They begin the kind of sack of the city. Thousands of buildings ransacked and burned. Hundreds of people, I mean, we can't be sure, but hundreds of people are slaughtered. Basically, if you look vaguely kind of liberal, in other words, if you, for example, have short hair, which is a sign of Republican sympathies, kind of Roman haircut, then there's a good chance that somebody will impale you on a pike and carry you through the streets. So basically, these Jacobins in the castles were in a total funk. They beg Rufo for a deal, and they end up signing this, what's called a capitulation on the 22nd of June.

1:02:07Dominic Sandbrook:It's basically this, that if they'll come out the castles, they'll give over any weapons they have. Rufo we'll let them go to Toulon and that will be the end of that. And when Maria Carolina hears this, she is absolutely furious. Can I read out what she tells Emma? You're going to do it in her voice? Yeah.

1:02:29Tom Holland:It's a masterpiece of infamy,

1:02:31Dominic Sandbrook:so infamous and absurd that it revolts me even to speak of it. See, do you know what? I know that you're in touch with Edouard Habsburg, the bearer of the Habsburg torch. He would be very offended that you've done a Habsburg accent in that way. I don't think so at all. Character from Oliver. She has the body of a woman, but the voice of a man. Right. Well, anyway, three days after that, so on the 25th, Nelson arrives in Naples with 18 ships of the line, and he now has a big decision to make. On the one hand, Cardinal Rufo had no authority to do this deal with the Jacobin. They're actually still in these castles.

1:03:06Dominic Sandbrook:They haven't come out yet. So Nelson could say, well, this deal is a nothing deal. It's null and void. you're still in rebellion and you deserve exemplary punishment. On the other hand, honour might demand that the deal has been agreed and you honour the deal. And clearly the Giacomet and the castles themselves think the deal is still on because the very next day, the 26th, they march out of the castles as agreed, they hand over their weapons and they're escorted to Neapolitan ships waiting in the harbour. So they're thinking, brilliant. Thank God we've come out of this for their lives. And these are thousands of people, right?

1:03:44Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, you know, five to 10 ,000 people or something like that. Exactly. And they assume, as per the deal, we're on our way to Toulon. The Republic hasn't worked out. Thank goodness this has ended without a terrible bloodbath.

1:03:55Tom Holland:And we can rely on Admiral Nelson as an Englishman, man of honour, given his word, all of that. Well, he hasn't given his word, has he?

1:04:04Dominic Sandbrook:No, but he will. That, I guess, is, you know, he's not going to just string them up. That's exactly what they think. Now, two days after that, Nelson orders that some of the Jacobins start to be transferred to British ships in the harbour, to Royal Navy ships. And at the same time, other prisoners are being brought aboard from the city. These are people who have been rounded up by the kind of the riffraff mobs. And this is clearly a great shock to the Jacobins who are being brought aboard the British ships. and is a shock to Nelson's own captains. Every source that we have on this has an agenda, has a different agenda.

1:04:46Dominic Sandbrook:So, you know, you have to be a little bit careful. But according to the British consul Charles Locke, admittedly not a fan of Nelson, he described how two of Nelson's captains, Samuel Hood and Benjamin Halliwell, immediately went to Nelson and said, this is not right at all. Like these people thought they were effectively under our protection. Either we should let them go to Toulon, as agreed, or if we're not going to do that, we should let them go back to the castles and basically resume the siege, like have a fair fight of it. This is not honourable. It's a breach of faith with them. Crucially, it's not how we behave in the Royal Navy.

1:05:21Dominic Sandbrook:This is not what we should do. And this, to me, does have the ring of plausibility that Nelson snaps at them and he says, I see you all against me, the slight self-pity that he often has. I'm determined to obey my orders right or wrong it shall be done i will be obeyed to me that is the tone of somebody who actually feels a little bit guilty about what he's doing and knows it's not entirely honorable but

1:05:43Tom Holland:feels he's trapped and he has no choice so what to make of this i mean there are a very very broad range of opinions on this right yeah because the upshot is a series of executions yes yeah so let's

1:05:59Dominic Sandbrook:If we get into the executions, so we mentioned Caracciolo, the admiral, who's basically a traitor.

1:06:07Tom Holland:And he's been hiding out disguised as a peasant. So he gets dragged in front of Nelson in his rags.

1:06:13Dominic Sandbrook:Yes. Nelson convenes a court-martial. Remember, this is on a British ship.

1:06:17Tom Holland:And he'd been serving with the Royal Navy.

1:06:19Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. So a lot of Nelson's officers are looking at this guy with sympathy. He's their old comrade. he is the court martial he's found guilty and is sentenced to be hanged and some of nelson's officers say to him could you not at least commute the sentence so that he's shot you know he can die in a more decorous dignified way and nelson and some of the others say why not hold off on this wait for king ferdinand to arrive in naples maybe he'll pardon this guy or maybe you know he'll take the decision himself and it won't be on us. And Nelson says, no, I'm not going to wait. I've got my orders. Caracciolo is hanged from the yard arm.

1:07:01Dominic Sandbrook:He hangs there until sunset and then his body is thrown into the sea. And they weigh him down and then subsequently it bobs back up again. Yes, it's floating around for ages. Looking all kind of white, white and green. One British lieutenant says, I have to say this amused me, which it probably shouldn't have done. The seamen of our fleet consoled themselves that it was only an Italian prince and the Admiral of Naples that was hanging. A person of very light estimation compared with the lowest man in a British ship. The bulldog spirit there. Now that sets the tone for what follows. The French troops are allowed to go to Toulon.

1:07:36Dominic Sandbrook:You know, when they evacuate their fort. Yeah, because they're prisoners of war, I guess, would be Nelson's thinking. They're not traitors. Yes. So maybe, I mean, who can say, maybe 8 ,000 people or so were put on trial. And Nelson himself is not embroiled in that process, is he? No, but some of them are tried on board his flagship, of course.

1:07:58Tom Holland:Well, Nelson approves of it. I mean, he thinks it's tremendous. I mean, he says he congratulates himself on driving the French to the devil and in restoring peace and happiness to mankind. And undoubtedly, he sees this process of executions as being part of that process of restoring peace and happiness to mankind. But it's not as it had been, say, with Caraccioli, that he is personally handling the legal process.

1:08:22Dominic Sandbrook:No. I mean, the execution – so the number of people who are executed, there are very different estimates. Maybe about 3 ,000 people are put into prison. Maybe about 100, 120, 150 are executed. The executions are often pretty grim. If you're lucky, you'll have your head chopped off. If you're unlucky, you're basically put onto a ladder with a rope around your neck, and then street urchins will cling to your feet to hang you effectively. So it's not the best way to die. Ferdinand and Maria Carolina are delighted with all this. They hand out rewards to Nelson's captains, to his crews, lots of bling.

1:08:59Dominic Sandbrook:Nelson gets loads more bling himself. He gets a diamond-studded sword that once belonged to Louis XIV. and above all, as his chief reward, he gets his dukedom. He's made the Duke of Bronte, which is a town in Sicily, in the foothills of Mount Etna, which becomes enormously important to Nelson. The weird thing is he never, ever visits it.

1:09:24Tom Holland:He dreams of retiring there, though, doesn't he? Yeah, like a British advertising executive retiring to Provence.

1:09:31Dominic Sandbrook:That's exactly what it is. In his mind, it is like a kind of, you know, a sort of a house in Provence or whatever. In reality, it's rather run down, I think. And he'd have found it very disappointing.

1:09:42Tom Holland:He employs a very effective land agent who I think whips it into some kind of shape. But I agree. I don't think it's not Provence.

1:09:49Dominic Sandbrook:And he always, from this point on, would sign himself Nelson and Bronte. Of course he does. And again, this is the kind of thing that to some people in Britain is just a bit embarrassing. You know, come on, you should be above this kind of thing.

1:10:01Tom Holland:I mean, we know how Nelson feels about it, that the King of Naples has rewarded him in a way that his Britannic majesty has significantly failed to do.

1:10:09Dominic Sandbrook:Now, news of these executions begins to spread quite quickly. And I mentioned a guy, I think earlier, called Charles Locke, who is the British consul. He has turned against Nelson and Emma, in particular because his wife hates Emma. And it's Locke who is the key person in spreading the news of the executions in Britain. He writes home and he says, Nelson's completely lost the plot. He is an accessory to this bloodthirsty vengeance in a very un-British way, and he's been encouraged by Emma, who is a total and utter monster. And we know that the gossip spread very quickly because, for example, within a few weeks, society kind of wig hostess called Lady Bespera is writing, I am miserable at the accounts I've read of the cruelties at Naples, but worst of all that my dear delightful Nelson should have let himself be drawn in to so disgraceful an action.

1:11:05Dominic Sandbrook:I hope the account's not true, as I've only read it in the newspapers, for I cannot bear it.

1:11:10Tom Holland:So this is the great blot on Nelson's escutcheon.

1:11:15Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

1:11:15Tom Holland:This is, without a doubt, the most controversial episode in his career. I mean, the most notorious. And so there's a kind of a range of perspectives on it, isn't there?

1:11:26Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. Again, I think it's a thing, it's one of these things that the listeners can make up their own minds to some degree. But if you start at one extreme, Andrew Lambert, very great naval historian, he says, not only did Nelson do nothing wrong, Nelson behaved absolutely brilliantly. Lambert says, the death toll was trifling. That's a direct quote. The penalty for a failed rebellion in time of war was well understood. He says, these people were basically the enemies of all that is good and right. They had it coming. They knew when they had their rebellion, they knew what was coming. why is there anything to debate here?

1:12:03Dominic Sandbrook:Nelson absolutely did the right thing. Then in the middle, you have John Sugden, whose, you know, titanic Nelson biography, probably the definitive one. He says Nelson's in an impossible situation here. He can either, you know, his orders are to stick to the king and queen of Naples. What can he do? You know, he can't really get out of it. And then you have more critical, Roger Knight. Roger Knight says, you know, this is the one moment in Nelson's career when he doesn't measure up, if he'd been smart, if he'd been more experienced, more measured, more reflective, he would have played for time.

1:12:40Dominic Sandbrook:He would have waited till King Ferdinand arrived in Naples, and then he'd have let the king do it all, and he wouldn't have done it on British ships and all of this kind of thing. And he sort of let himself down there. And Roger Knight says, this is because, and I quote, his naive attachment to the point of sycophancy to the Hamiltons and to Maria Carolina, and that this is definitely a black mark. And there's actually an even more critical take, isn't there? Is it Jonathan North? Yes.

1:13:06Tom Holland:So his book came out just before the pandemic, so 2018, I think, called Nelson at Naples. And he's basically read every conceivable source there is on this topic. And his conclusion is actually very damning. And so to quote him, my view after having looked at as much of the material as possible is that Nelson did indeed commit a crime at Naples and was guilty of betraying the prisoners. It's a very, very comprehensive analysis of the sources, and I'm convinced by it. At the same time, I do also think that Sugden's point has value that this is a chaotic and turbulent situation. I think Nelson makes the wrong decision, but I can understand the stresses that perhaps led him to behave in a less honourable way than was his norm.

1:14:00Tom Holland:But I do think he committed war crimes. I do think he was at fault.

1:14:04Dominic Sandbrook:I don't know what I think about this, to be brutally honest. I guess the truth is the most damning thing is not what any historian thinks or what we think. It's what Nelson's own contemporaries thought. And we know that some of Nelson's friends and comrades in the Royal Navy thought he behaved poorly, don't we? And I think the fact that his own captains, members of his kind of band of brothers, said, you know, you don't have to do this. And to do it on a British ship, it's just not right. When these guys have been promised safe passage, it's just not right. I feel that that's pretty overwhelming.

1:14:42Tom Holland:Yeah, and this is clearly part of the climate of opinion. Even in the wake of Trafalgar, Nelson's death is apotheosis. So the first kind of celebrated biography of Nelson written by Robert Southey, poet laureate, great enemy of Byron, who's very laudatory, thinks Nelson is brilliant. But he does say about this episode that it is a stain on the memory of Nelson and upon the honour of England. Yeah. And I think that people admire Nelson so much that they don't want to believe it's true. I don't know if you've read Barry Unsworth's novel, Losing Nelson, which is about a kind of scholar of Nelson, a biographer of Nelson, who's so obsessed by him that he's driven mad by the possibility that Nelson might have behaved poorly.

1:15:24Tom Holland:And I think biographies of Nelson, I think, are very reluctant to face up to the possibility that he might have got things so badly wrong. And I think that's true of his contemporaries as well, of his captains, of his friends.

1:15:38Dominic Sandbrook:So for me, one easy fix, as it were, is to say even heroic and impressive people have feet of clay. And in time of war, where you're making impossible decision after impossible decision. There's every chance that you'll get one or two of them wrong and that they'll look very dishonorable and have terrible consequences. I mean, that's the nature of commanding in a time when hundreds of people's, thousands of people's lives depend upon your decisions.

1:16:03Tom Holland:But Dominic, of course, there is another fix, which is to blame everything on a woman. And there is a convenient woman to hand who can be blamed.

1:16:12Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, so this starts straight away. So we mentioned the story spreading in England. And Lady Holland, of all people, Tom, wrote in her journal a few weeks later, Naples now exhibits a scene of revenge more bloody than the Sicilian Vespers. Lady Hamilton has not been remiss in adding her quota to the barbarity, which inflames every breast. Now, I know this has been quite a long episode, so we don't have time to delve massively into all this. But it's pretty clear that quite soon after the story has spread, people started to say, oh, well, it's all Emma Hamilton's fault. She's so close to the Queen.

1:16:47Dominic Sandbrook:She was adding names to the list. She was celebrating while the executions were taking place, all of this kind of thing. Maybe she was, but I think it's probably exaggerated. And probably, I mean, here's a case where I think quite clearly there's an awful lot of projection, a lot of Lady Mabeth kind of stuff going on. Yes, absolutely.

1:17:09Tom Holland:And I think also there is clear evidence that actually, We talked about Emma trying to get the men who are being flogged by Captain Hardy off their punishment. She is clearly, she's so close to the Queen. People are coming to her with requests and she is asking for people to be let off. She gives the Queen a kind of long list. She adds to it herself. The Queen says, no, you're far too soft-hearted. Equally, I think there are times when she is upset on behalf of the Queen or she feels, say with Caraccioli, who she toasts his execution. With a wine glass in hand, right? With a wine glass in her hand.

1:17:49Tom Holland:And I think she feels that he's been a traitor both to her beloved Royal Navy and to her beloved Queen. And I think she's a very emotional woman who clearly swings between toasting the execution of an admiral and kind of going to someone who she's very close to, namely the Queen, and saying, please let all these people off and being rebuffed. But I think there's probably enough there, you know, raising a toast to an execution of an admiral who lots of people on Nelson's ships would have known. You can see how these stories would have spread.

1:18:20Dominic Sandbrook:So, Tom, this is so disappointing because this was set up to be a massive argument. And actually, we've both ended up taking much more measured positions. We've basically turned into the rest as politics after all. We have. We're agreeing agreeably. oh no right but what lies behind this is what we'll be coming to next time because what lies behind all this is the deepening relationship between nelson and emma hamilton because as we have said at some point in the early months of 1799 they have begun an affair and as we look ahead to the next episode nelson is preparing he will eventually return to england and there he will face perhaps the most threatening and implacable adversary of his life.

1:19:08Dominic Sandbrook:It is, of course, not the French. It is the disapproval and derision of the British people.

1:19:15Tom Holland:Well, unbelievable excitement. What a cliffhanger. And if you want to hear all five subsequent episodes, then you can do that by going to therestishistory.com and signing up there. But for now, I will say goodbye. Goodbye.

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1:20:12Tom Holland:Dominic, since it's the summer, I've obviously been thinking a lot about cricket. However, I am aware that the World Cup is on as well. And so occasionally football intrudes on my mind as well. And so I've been thinking about what my historical dream football teams would be. And who would be in your historical dream team? I've numbered it down to four, what I think would be the classics. And they are, of course, the Aztecs, the Royal Navy. We've got to have the Royal Navy. Austro-Hungary.

1:20:45Dominic Sandbrook:And, of course, ancient Rome. I mean, it's an amazing coincidence because the rest is history. I have just launched football shirts for those very teams. teams so if there are people out there who want to know what kwauteimok would have worn during the siege of tinochet land or nelson this is your chance to find out and how would one

1:21:08Tom Holland:i'll put it bluntly me how would i get my hands on one two three or perhaps all of these bespoke

1:21:16Dominic Sandbrook:kits you would want to head as quickly as possible to the rest is history.com and you go to the merch tab then you would be able to pre-order one of these fantastic limited edition shirts would there be a way of personalizing these shirts i'm going to make you so happy now because actually there would each shirt can be personalized with a choice of historical figures the big names from that particular team so for example the royal navy you can go for horatio nelson or emma hamilton you can go for franz ferdinand or sophie for the austro-hungarian empire for the aztecs you can go for cuau tamoc montezuma or malinche okay these sound absolutely

1:21:59Tom Holland:brilliant um the perfect way for our beloved listeners to celebrate the world cup and i will certainly be heading to the website and clicking on the merch page on restishistory.com i simply cannot wait.