to Great Britain, he was of
course far more tender; and, while he rejected no suggestion without
consideration, he regarded the distance as too great to render such a
means of subsistence certain. The numerous privateers that haunted
every port would intercept the transports and render convoys
necessary; it was not worth while, for so small an advantage, to
involve Naples, in its already critical state, in a dispute with
France. An occasional purchase, however, seems to have been made
there; and even France herself was at times brought to contribute,
indirectly, to the support of the squadron which was watching one of
her principal ports. "Latterly our cattle and onions have been
procured from France," wrote Nelson; "but from the apparent
incivilities of the Spaniards, I suppose we are on the eve of being
shut out." To escape the notice of the French agents, it was obviously
desirable to distribute as widely as possible the sources of supply,
so as not to concentrate observation upon any one, or upon the general
fact.

It was, however, upon Sardinia that Nelson in the end chiefly
depended. The importance of this island, both in fact and in his
estimation, was so great, that it may be said to have constituted the
chief object of his thought and anxiety, after his own squadron and
the French, which also he at times prophetically spoke of as his own.
"I do not mean to use the shells you have sent me at sea," he writes
to General Villettes, "for that I hope to consider burning _our own_
ships; but in case they run ashore, then a few put into their sides
will do their business." In addition to its extremely favorable
central position, Sardinia, as compared to Sicily, did not entail the
perplexity that its use by the British might cause a friendly
sovereign the loss of his continental dominions. Those of the King of
Sardinia had passed already nearly, if not wholly, out of his hands.
The island itself was so wild, poor, and neglected, that, even if
seized by the enemy, the King would lose little. The net revenue
derived from it was only L5,000.

During the previous war Nelson's attention had not been called much to
Sardinia. Up to the withdrawal from the Mediterranean in 1796, Corsica
had been a sufficient, and more suitable, base for the operations of
the fleet, which until then had been upon the Riviera and the
northern coast of Italy. When he returned in 1798, even after the
Battle of the Nile and the disasters of the