Next year, 1798, Nelson was also made a peer for a glorious victory won on his own account. He had learnt from Lord Hood the first principle of all defence--that the real aim is not so much to stand on guard or even to win a victory as to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you. This chimed in with his own straight-forward genius; and he never forgot his old chief: "the best officer that England has to boast of." Hood had the misfortune never to have been in supreme command during a great battle. But, in Nelson's opinion, he stood above all other commanders-in-chief of his own time; and, as we look back on him now, we see that Nelson alone surpassed him. Napoleon, like the Germans of today, hoped to make land-power beat sea-power in the East by stirring up rebellion against the British rule in India and making Egypt his bridge between Europe and Asia. With daring skill he crossed the Mediterranean and conquered Egypt. But his victory proved worse than useless; for Nelson followed the French fleet and utterly defeated it in the Bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile on the 1st of August, 1798. The battle was fought with the utmost firmness on both sides, each knowing that the fate of Egypt, of the East, and of Napoleon's army as well as of his fleet, hung trembling in the scales. The odds were twelve British battleships to thirteen French. The French sailors, as usual, were not such skilled hands as the British, partly because France had always been rather a country of landsmen than seamen, but chiefly because the French fleets were, as a rule, so closely blockaded that they could not use the open sea for training nearly so much as their British rivals did. Still, the French fleet, though at anchor (and so unable to change its position quickly to suit the changes of the fight) looked as if it could defy even Nelson himself. For it was drawn up across the bay with no spot left unguarded between it and the land at either end of the line; and it was so close in shore that its admirals never thought anybody would try to work his way inside.