The Life Of Nelson, Volume II.

May, 1803 -- January, 1805. Age, 45-46.

When Nelson, after a three years' absence, returned to the Mediterranean in 1803, he found the conditions, upon which the military balance of power there depended, greatly altered from those he had known during the period of his previous service. He had been present, indeed, almost an eye-witness, at the tremendous reverse associated with the name of Marengo, for that battle, it will be remembered, was fought while he was at Leghorn on his return to England; but Marengo, and the conventions following it, were at the moment only the beginning of an end which then could not be foreseen.

The most significant token of the entire change of conditions -- of the predominant, far-reaching, and firmly fastened grip of France on the land -- was the presence of an army corps of fifteen thousand men in the extreme southeast of Italy, occupying the Kingdom of Naples from the river Ofanto, on the Adriatic coast, round to the Bradano on the Gulf of Taranto, and including the useful ports of Brindisi and Taranto. This distant and eccentric extension of the arms of the Republic bespoke Bonaparte's confidence in the solidity of his situation in the South of Europe; for under previous circumstances, even after his victorious campaign of 1796, he had always deprecated an occupation of Naples, and relied upon threats and a display of force to insure the quiescence of that state.