y manner toward Carlscrona, Nelson
chafing and fretting, none the less for his illness, under the
indecision and dilatoriness that continued to characterize Parker's
movements. "My dear friend," he had written to Lady Hamilton, "we are
very lazy. We Mediterranean people are not used to it." "Lord St.
Vincent," he tells his brother, "will either take this late business
up with a very high hand, or he will depress it; but how they will
manage about Sir Hyde I cannot guess. I am afraid much will be said
about him in the public papers; but not a word shall be drawn from me,
for God knows they may make him Lord Copenhagen if they please, it
will not offend me." But now that Denmark has been quieted, he cannot
understand nor tolerate the delay in going to Revel, where the
appearance of the fleet would checkmate, not only Russia, but all the
allied squadrons; for it would occupy an interior and commanding
position between the detachments at Revel, Cronstadt, and Carlscrona,
in force superior to any one of them. "On the 19th of April," he
afterwards wrote bitterly to St. Vincent, "we had eighteen ships of
the line and a fair wind. Count Pahlen [the Russian Cabinet Minister]
came and resided at Revel, evidently to endeavour to prevent any
hostilities against the Russian fleet there, which was, I decidedly
say, at our mercy. Nothing, if it had been right to make the attack,
could have saved one ship of them in two hours after our entering the
bay; and to prevent their destruction, Sir Hyde Parker had a great
latitude for asking for various things for the suspension of his
orders." That is, Parker having the fleet at his mercy could have
exacted terms, just as Nelson himself had exacted them from Denmark
when Copenhagen was laid open; the advantage, indeed, was far greater,
as the destruction of an organized force is a greater military evil
than that of an unarmed town. This letter was written after Nelson had
been to Revel, and seen the conditions on which he based his opinion.

So far from taking this course,--which it may be said would have
conformed to instructions from his Government then on their way, and
issued after knowing Paul's death,--Parker appeared off Carlscrona on
April 20th. Two days afterwards he received a letter from the Russian
minister at Copenhagen, saying that the Emperor had ordered his fleet
to abstain from all hostilities. Parker apparently forgot that he was
first a naval officer, and only incidentally