ABSTRACT
The most recent proponents of this view are Paul M. Kennedy and Michael Howard; its most recent critics Northcote Parkinson and Richard Glover. The columns towering over Trafalgar Square in London and over Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill indicate how securely Nelson is seated in the Pantheon of heroes, one in a line stretching from Francis Drake playing bowls as the Spanish Armada came into sight to David Beatty, squandering battle cruisers before Jutland with a stiff upper lip. Nelson’s reputation is fraudulent. The events leading to the campaign in the Mediterranean in the summer of 1798 merit examination, because its significance has been slightly misplaced and because the French occupation of Egypt to which it led, determined both Great Britain’s aims in the war of the Second Coalition and the manner in which she fought for them.
