once to Malta. Nelson, it is true, did not receive this; but it is
impossible to reconcile with attention to orders the diversion of two
ships of their force from the singularly important station appointed
them by the commander-in-chief, without reference to him, and using
them to carry about foreign sovereigns. On arriving in Leghorn, on the
14th of June, Nelson announced the fact to Keith, with apparent
perfect unconsciousness that the latter could be other than charmed.
"I was obliged to bring the Alexander, or the party never could have
been accommodated: I therefore trust you will approve of it." "I was
so displeased by the withdrawing of the ships from before Malta,"
wrote Keith to Paget, "and with other proceedings, that her Majesty
did not take any notice of me latterly." It would seem also that some
harm had come of it. "What a clamour, too, letting in the ships to
Malta will occasion. I assure you nothing has given me more real
concern, it was so near exhausted." "Had not Nelson quitted the
blockade," he wrote a week later, "and taken the ships off the
station, it might have fallen about this time."[6]

Lord Keith had been engaged for six weeks past in the famous blockade
and siege of Genoa, the garrison of which, spent with famine and
disease, marched out on the 5th of June, 1800. On the 14th--the day
Nelson reached Leghorn--was fought the Battle of Marengo, in which the
Austrians were totally defeated, the French army under Bonaparte
remaining victorious across their line of retreat to Mantua. The next
day Mélas signed a convention, abandoning Northern Italy, as far as
the Mincio, to the French, to whom were given up all the fortified
places, Genoa included. At midnight of June 18, Nelson received an
order from Keith to take all the ships at Leghorn to Spezia, for
certain minor military purposes. Nelson sent the "Alexander" and a
frigate, but remained himself in Leghorn with the "Foudroyant," ready,