Twelve weary Months in the Mediterranean (1804) “_My wish is to make a grand_ coup.” NELSON. A new year had dawned. “The storm is brewing,” Nelson wrote, and he thought Sardinia “one of the objects of its violence.” If that island were captured or ceded to the enemy, “Sicily, Malta, Egypt, &c., &c., is lost, sooner or later.” The Madalena Islands, to the north of Sardinia, not only afforded the ships a safe anchorage but ensured plenty of fresh water and provisions: “Sardinia is the most important post in the Mediterranean. It covers Naples, Sicily, Malta, Egypt, and all the Turkish dominions; it blockades Toulon; the wind which would carry a French fleet to the westward is fair from Sardinia; and Madalena is the most important station in this most important island. I am told that the revenues, after paying the expenses of the island, do not give the king 5000 _l._ sterling a year. If it is so, I would give him 500,000 _l._ to cede it, which would give him 25,000 _l._ a year for ever. This is only my conversation, and not to be noticed--but the king cannot long hold Sardinia.” On the 11th February 1804 he assures “my dear friend” Ball that “we are ... on the eve of great events; the sooner they come the better.” Private letters led him to believe that the squadrons at Brest and Ferrol were to form a junction with that at Toulon. Should his surmise prove correct he inferred an invasion of both the Morea and Egypt, a belief fostered by the wily Napoleon by means of a camp under General St Cyr at Taranto, in the heel of Italy. Nelson communicated his notions to the Grand Vizier. “Your Highness,” he adds, “knows them too well to put any confidence in what they say. Bonaparte’s tongue is that of a serpent oiled. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to frustrate the designs of this common disturber of the human race.”