NELSON, Horatio.

An autograph letter, signed, to Major-General William Anne Villettes. Dated 'Victory, April 18th 1804'.

240 x 190 mm, pp. [3]; Villettes’ docket on verso, reads ‘Lord Nelson 18th April 1804, Answered 18th May’; old folds, slightly dust-soiled. This letter is not recorded in Nicolas’s The dispatches and letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson (7 vols: 1845–1846) or White’s Nelson: the new letters (2005). Written while commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean, a period of Nelson’s life which White describes as ‘by far the most important period in his professional career, during which he demonstrated his abilities as an all-round commander better than at any other time’ (White p. 294), this letter illustrates his management of the war in the Mediterranean, with its attendant diplomatic and intelligence gathering requisites.Villettes, a Swiss born British Army officer whom Nelson had earlier described as ‘a most excellent officer’ (Nicolas I p. 393), was then based in Malta (1801–1807) and was commander-in-chief of the military forces in the Mediterranean. He and Nelson had been friends since 1794 when the two had participated in the siege of Bastia in Corsica, the former in charge of the military forces and the latter the naval command.In response to Villettes’ letters of 17 and 18 March, which include an extract from a letter by Hugh Elliott, British minister at Naples from 1803 to 1806, Nelson states that he would be unwilling to order an attack on Alexandria. He notes Russia was likely to enter the war soon (which it did in April 1805), making the neutrality of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia untenable, and noting that under such circumstances Villettes would be called upon to aid Naples. He also comments on the French naval and military force being gathered in Toulon and suggests that its likely object was Egypt.‘In the early nineteenth century there was no central naval intelligence service. Commanders-in-chief established their own local networks based on personal contacts, and the information gathering of their scouting ships. It is still a little-known area of naval history and, to date there has been very little in the way of detailed academic study of the fascinating, but necessarily rather shadowy, subject. One of the problems confronting historians hitherto has been the paucity of primary source material and this has applied to Nelson as much as to any of his contemporaries. As a result, this important aspect of his work, especially during his time as the Mediterranean commander-in-chief, has hardly featured at all in the various biographies’ (White p. 368). The regular correspondance Nelson maintained with Villettes was part of his information gathering system and this letter provides a good example of how such a system worked.Not in Nicolas, The dispatches and letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson or White, Nelson: the new letters.

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• ordernr.: T2924

• bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)