London may indeed have been better informed than Nelson was. The Foreign Office, the Admiralty and the War Office all collected intelligence, from professional agents, consular officials, well-disposed or garrulous travellers and foreign newspapers, among other sources. As early as 24 April Lord Spencer, the Foreign Secretary, had noted the destination of “the Toulon ships” as “Portugal—Naples—Egypt.” Two days later “61’78’71” (the designation of an agent) “believes,” he wrote, “the object to be Egypt incredible as it seems.” Henry Dundas, Secretary of War and a member of the board of the East India Company, was meanwhile telling the Admiralty of news passed by an American recently in France of French plans to invade the Channel Islands, to send an expeditionary force to Ireland (which came about in August), to raise revolution in Naples and Poland (both blows against Austria), but also of a “strange scheme respecting Egypt,” by which 400 French officers were to be sent overland through that country to assist Tipu Sultan against the British in India.
The Admiralty had its own man in the Toulon Armament’s operational zone, Lieutenant William Day, sent to Genoa to sell three Navy Board transports marooned there since the withdrawal from the Mediterranean in 1796. Day’s reports, sent overland via the normal route through Germany to Hamburg and then by sea to London, the transmission time being anything from three to five weeks, first suggested that Spain was the destination. By 1 May, however, when he himself arrived in London, he brought news that indicated the eastern Mediterranean as a possibility. It was that the Armament was embarking 4,000 ten-hooped barrels, without bungholes, the purpose of which was judged to be to buoy warships over shallows. The First Lord deduced that they were needed for the passage through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. It is indicative of how defective was the Admiralty’s contemporary information that it believed a waterway navigable by modern container ships was not by men-of-war a fraction of their draught.
Other information available in London was, however, better. French newspapers, often acquired within a week or less of publication, were remarkably indiscreet. During late March, April and early May, L’Echo, Le Surveillant and Le Moniteur all printed material which amplified the picture the government was forming of the Toulon Armament’s strength, provisioning and even destination. Le Moniteur, under government control, tried to muddy the water by printing deliberate misinformation but the trend of the news remained unmistakable: a big fleet was preparing for a long-range military operation. Gossip helped to refine the picture. Some of the academics who were to accompany the expedition began to boast, a notorious failing of clever men leading unimportant lives. De Dolemieu, a mineralogist, wrote to de Luc, Professor of Natural History at Göttingen, that books about Egypt, Persia, India and the Black and Caspian seas were being shipped and that rumour had it the objective was Egypt and the purpose to intercept Britain’s commerce with India. De Luc, unfortunately, was both a member of the household of Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife, and a Foreign Office agent. He passed the word on 7 May.11
The best intelligence received in London came, however, through official channels. It had been assembled by what would become classic spy-novel methods. The consul in Leghorn (Livorno) in northern Italy, Udney, had a well-informed contact in a local British merchant, Jones, who maintained commercial correspondence with other trading houses throughout the Mediterranean. His sources led him to overestimate somewhat the size of the Toulon Armament, but he got its departure date roughly right and its destination and purpose uncannily so. Its intermediate stop was to be Malta, which would be surrendered, and then Alexandria (though perhaps alternatively the Black Sea), with the object of landing troops to march overland to the Persian Gulf or sail down the Red Sea to attack the British East India Company’s possessions in India. Udney’s report, dated 16 April, was passed by the Foreign Office to the Admiralty on 24 May.
For a while London chose to discount the information. There were other dangers nearer home that a great French amphibious expedition threatened, a descent on Portugal, in concert with the Spanish, an offensive against Britain itself, perhaps via Ireland, where rebellion broke out in May. What may have been deliberate French disinformation suggested that the rumours about Egypt were a cover story to conceal the real strategic purpose of the Toulon Armament. On 1 June, the Foreign Secretary wrote to Lord Mornington, Governor General in India, that “Bonaparte has at last embarked at Toulon with the project of attacking Ireland . . . taking or not taking Portugal in his way.”
New information soon dispelled these misapprehensions. Some came from the French press, more, and more compelling, from the gossipy academic world. A French scholar, Faujas de St. Fond, was reported from Frankfurt, in the occupied German territories, as affirming that the Armament was sailing for Egypt; had Bonaparte known of their stream of leaks he certainly must have regretted the decision to encumber the expedition with so many professional talkers. St. Fond’s indiscretion was received in London by 13 June. On the 11th a despatch from the diplomatic mission in Florence had brought an even more credible report: the French general Carvoni had revealed that the expedition, which he was to accompany, was going to Egypt and then India. Two days later the Foreign Secretary wrote to his brother, “It really looks as if Bonaparte was after all in sober truth going to Egypt; and Dundas [Secretary of War] seems to think the scheme of attacking India from thence not so impractical as it may appear. I am still incredulous as to the latter point, though as to the former I am shaken. But as Bonaparte on the 23rd was still off Toulon [wrong] and as Lord St. Vincent must have detached [Troubridge’s ships] on the 21st at latest, there is real reason to hope that Nelson may destroy all these visions.”12