Among the numerous rewards bestowed for this action, the admiral was advanced to the peerage as Earl St. Vincent, while upon Nelson was bestowed the then distinguished honor of Knight of the Bath. On the 20th of February he was made a rear-admiral. The captains of the fleet received medals, and the senior lieutenant of each ship was promoted.
Jervis had well said that Great Britain was then in essential need of a victory; and never was one better timed for political effect. Deep gloom prevailed throughout the country, and in every quarter the horizon was black with clouds, when, on the 3d of March, the bearer of the dispatches reached the admiralty. Since Bonaparte had seized the line of the Adige and cut off Mantua, three distinct attempts had been made by the Austrians in superior force to dislodge him and relieve the city; and in all three they had been beaten with heavy loss. The news was but lately come that Mantua had capitulated, leaving Bonaparte free to assume the offensive and advance, as he shortly did. The British fleet had been forced to abandon Corsica and the Mediterranean. Peace negotiations, begun with the republic, had ended by the British envoy being peremptorily ordered to leave France in forty-eight hours; and although the government had not expected a favorable issue, the effect on the people was disheartening. Consols fell to 51, a depression greater than any reached during the American Revolution.[147] The expedition of the French against Ireland had indeed failed; but so little share had the Channel fleet borne in their defeat, that the country was forced to ascribe to the direct interposition of Divine Providence a deliverance, which it would have preferred to see wrought through the instrumentality of the navy. That trusted arm of the national defence seemed palsied in every quarter. Finally, among the greater of many discouraging circumstances, specie payments were stopped by the Bank of England on the 26th of February, in obedience to an order of the government. The profuse subsidies paid to continental states, and the demands for coin to meet the expenses of the navy in all parts of the world, were the chief causes of a drain against which the bank directors had frequently remonstrated during two years as threatening ruin. To these causes for scarcity was added at this time another, temporary in its character and arising in great part from loss of confidence in the navy's efficiency,—the fear, namely, of invasion. People had begun to call for and to hoard coin against an evil day. Such was the outlook as Jervis's captain posted from Falmouth, where he landed, to London, keeping the secret of his good news within his breast. The frigate which had borne him went on to Plymouth with the viceroy of Corsica, returning with his suite from his lost principality. When they landed on the 5th of March, news had just reached the town of the suspension of cash payments, and, as they told of the great achievement off Cape St. Vincent, people at first refused to believe that the tide had turned. They were expecting to hear of a junction between the French and Spanish fleets, and an approaching invasion. So great was the financial panic, that fifteen guineas were with difficulty collected among government officials to pay the expenses of Elliott's journey to London.[148]