"so vain and silly, surprised and almost disgusted" him. That view
does not stand to _his_ credit, and no one else held it.

But let us see what a greater man than either Wellington or Nelson
says of both. Napoleon, at St. Helena, spoke in very high terms of
Lord Nelson,[9] and indeed attempted to palliate that one stigma on
his memory, the execution of Carraciolli, which he attributed entirely
to his having been deceived by that wicked woman Queen Caroline,
through Lady Hamilton, and to the influence which the latter had over
him. He says of the Duke: "Judging from Wellington's actions, from his
dispatches, and, above all, from his conduct towards Ney, I should
pronounce him to be a poor-spirited man, without generosity, and
without greatness of soul ('Un homme de peu d'esprit, sans générosité,
et sans grandeur d'âme'). Such I know to be the opinion of Benjamin
Constant and of Madame de Staël, who said that, except as a general,
he had not two ideas. As a general, however, to find his equal amongst
your own nation, you must go back to the time of Marlborough, but as
anything else, I think that history will pronounce him to be a man of
limited capacity ('Un homme borné')."[10]

"Nelson is a brave man. If Villeneuve at Aboukir and Dumanoir at
Trafalgar had had a little of his blood, the French would have been
conquerors. I ought to have had Dumanoir's head cut off. Do you not
think more highly of Nelson than of the best engineers who construct
fortifications? Nelson had what a mere engineer officer can never
acquire. It is a gift of nature."

The Emperor, in his eulogy of Nelson, is not unmindful of the terrible
crime he was led to commit at the instigation of that human viper,
Queen Caroline, and the licentious Emma Hamilton. He, to some extent,