Volume 25, Nelson and the Neapolitan Jacobins. 'Documents relating to the Suppression of the Jacobin Revolution at Naples, June 1799',
ed. H.C. Gutteridge

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Review, by Andrew Lambert

The Navy Records Society produced this volume in its tenth year of existence. It remains a highly important, but largely misunderstood, contribution to our understanding of the heros career. Its origins lie in the close working relationship that developed between the Society's founder, Secretary and Editor, Professor John Knox Laughton (1830-1915), and the American strategic writer Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan USN (1840-1914). The two men corresponded regularly, and soon developed a mutual respect based on shared interests and the advancement of their own naval services, naval education, and recovering naval strategy from historical evidence. Between 1896 and 1900 both men were working on Nelson studies, using the life of the greatest admiral as the basis for naval education. With the centenary of his greatest achievements looming many aspects of Nelson's life and career were thrown under the spotlight.

Robert Southeys enduring biography of 1814 treats the affairs of Naples in 1799 as a dark, inexpungible stain on the career of the hero. Southey has Nelson ‘trick the Jacobin prisoners into ships, and then hand them over to the harsh mercy of their King, and then conduct a hasty trial and execution of Commodore Carraciolo, which Southey implies was little more than judicial murder. In his Life of Nelson, published in 1897, Mahan was particularly critical of a hostile account of these incidents written by Captain Edward Foote.His comments provoked Foote's grandson, Francis Pritchett Badham, to mount a formidable, if ill-conceived, assault on Nelson's honesty, and as a sideline on the integrity and scholarship of Mahan and Laughton. They were determined to protect Nelson's good name from the slurs of Badham, while demolishing those contained in Southey's book. The controversy was significant because the two men placed Nelson at the pinnacle of naval command, and used his career to teach the officers of the next generation. They could not use Nelson as the exemplar of leadership if his conduct was open to the criticism of immorality, either for his treatment of the Neapolitan Jacobins or for his affair with Lady Hamilton. The former matter has remained a problem for Nelson scholars from that day to this. In essence the Neapolitan Revolution was adopted by Italian liberals as the beginning of national regeneration and independence, when modern Italy, the new Italy, our Italy was born. The first account of the events by a republican participant appeared as early as 1801, deliberately attempting to shape the judgement of posterity. This attempt, and those that followed, would appear to have worked, for by the late nineteenth century liberal historians who addressed the issue, led by Neapolitan Benedetto Croce, made it a moral and ethical question; Because he restored the corrupt Bourbon regime, suppressing the movement for Neapolitan autonomy, the mythic basis for Italian unity, Nelsons actions have always been portrayed by liberal Italian nationalist historians in the darkest terms. The Italian sympathies of British liberal historians and intellectuals have reinforced this message, creating a dark shadow on an otherwise distinguished career.Unaware of these deeper themes in the literature, Laughton and Mahan addressed the evidence, and began to uncover the confused history of the issue.

For three years the two men joined forces, overwhelming first Badham, and then the legion of ill-informed, hostile critics who seemed to dog the hero's heels. Badham had sent his Nelson paper to Samuel Rawson Gardiner, editor of the English Historical Review, who, after agonising over the evidence, as it appeared, concluded that Laughton and Mahan were wrong. Having published Badham, he was mortified to find that his old friend and the famous American had been right all along, and advised using the Records Society, of which he was a Vice-President, to settle the matter. While Laughton worked at the sources, Mahan prepared a series of retorts and papers that culminated in the comprehensive revision of his two chapters on Naples in the second edition (1899) of his Life of Nelson. These were longer, and adopted a scholarly approach to the use of evidence. This was the only time Mahan ever rewrote one of his books. Eventually the two men amassed enough evidence to secure a victory, and Laughton set H. C. Gutteridge, a young Cambridge graduate, to work on the Italian archives. When the Records Society published his volume in 1903 it was the culmination of Laughton and Mahan's efforts.

Gutteridges researches uncovered a web of fictions, half-truths and archival losses, some of the latter caused by Alexandre Dumas the elder, while local scholars proved reluctant to admit the Englishman into their archives. After considerable effort in Naples he compared most of the existing published documents with the originals and found many to be incompetently, or maliciously, garbled, and he discovered forty new letters between Nelson and Neapolitan Prime Minister Sir John Action, and the correspondence between Maria Carolina and Lady Hamilton in June 1799. Gutteridge also used key passages from the logs of Nelson's flagship HMS Foudroyant and Foote's Seahorse. Before publishing his edition Gutteridge used the material for his King's College, Cambridge, Fellowship dissertation, which Laughton examined; but he made no further contribution to naval history.The material resulted in a very detailed narrative introduction, probably the longest in the Societys history, and a rich haul of evidence that established that Nelsons handling of the Jacobin prisoners, and of Commodore Francisco Carraciolo, had been firm but within the limits of his authority and the laws of war. Nelson's character had been re-established.

Curiously, successive biographers and authors have either ignored the volume, or discounted it as an inconvenient interference with their retelling of the Southey version, which requires Nelsons greatness to be highlighted by a moral failing. Fortunately the tide seems to have turned, and the latest life, by Edgar Vincent, takes a more robust and correct view of the affair, citing Gutteridge's work.

After many decades out of print this key volume was reprinted in 2003, along with Nelson's Letters to his Wife. Both volumes are available from the Society. For details consult the stock list in the Annual General Report.