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"It stated that he had been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy, and in three actions with boats employed in cutting out of harbor, in destroying vessels, and in taking three towns; he had served on shore with the army four months, and commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi; he had assisted at the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, and eleven privateers; taken and destroyed near fifty sail of merchant vessels, and actually been engaged against the enemy upward of a hundred and twenty times; in which service he had lost his right eye and right arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body."
Then he was far from certain that he was pursuing an enemy at all, whatever distrust the signals may have excited, since she had clearly come out of a friendly port. Bastia, too, lay within a few hours' run, and there was the whole of the east coast of Corsica, abounding with small bays and havens, in which a vessel of that size might take refuge if pressed.
Thus the siege of Bastia ended in triumph, despite the prior pronouncement of the general commanding the troops, that the attempt was "most visionary and rash."
In this same letter, addressed to General Villettes, at Malta, formerly his coadjutor at the siege of Bastia, Nelson, in the intimacy of friendship, reveals what was to him at once the secret of health and the fulfilment of desire; the congenial atmosphere in which his being throve, and expanded to fulfil the limits of his genius.
With coffee came the question of fixing a date for the signature of the deed of sale at the notary's office at Bastia. And instantly the mouse skipped, as it were, into a retired corner of the conversation and crouched silent, watching with bright eyes. "I should like it to be done soon," said the colonel, who, at the suggestion of his hostess, had lighted a cigarette.
He lunched and dined chez Clement always, and was frankly, good naturedly bored at Bastia. He hated Corsica, had no sympathy with the Corsican, and was a Northern Frenchman to the tips of his long white fingers.
You are probably aware that the Administration, as represented by the Prefect, etc., and the magistrature never get on well together; in Corsica it is worse than elsewhere. The seat of the Administration is at Ajaccio, that of the magistrature at Bastia; we two therefore belonged to hostile parties.
One afternoon, a few months after the double shot which, as the newspapers said, "plunged the village of Pietranera into a state of consternation," a young man with his left arm in a sling, rode out of Bastia, toward the village of Cardo, celebrated for its spring, which in summer supplies the more fastidious inhabitants of the town with delicious water.
Both classes, however, claimed to be true patriots. During the War of the Austrian Succession it seemed for a moment as if Corsica were to be freed by the attempt of Maria Theresa to overthrow Genoa, then an ally of the Bourbon powers. The national party rose again under Gaffori, the regiments of Piedmont came to their help, and the English fleet delivered St. Florent and Bastia into their hands.
It is well to notice that his journal, and correspondence with Lord Hood, clearly recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi; for it makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood's report had put him unfairly in the background, he was not exaggerating his actual though ill-defined position there.
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