"This, if true," he wrote, "I humbly conceive would have been as well kept secret; but as it is known, we must take care to get so close that their red shots may go _through_ both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or cold." It is somewhat odd that the extremely diligent and painstaking Sir Harris Nicolas, in his version of this letter, should have dropped the concluding sentence, one of the most important and characteristic occurring in Nelson's correspondence at this time.
On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had received orders to consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of whatever nation bound into those ports.

He at once recognized the importance of this step, and the accurate judgment that dictated it.
The British could not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified harbor; but they might by this means exercise the pressure that would force him to come out.

Undoubtedly, whether on a large or on a small scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war or of a campaign, or merely the question of a single military position, the best way to compel an unwilling foe to action, and to spoil his waiting game which is so onerous to the would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere, to cut short his resources, and make his position untenable by exhaustion.

"This has pleased us," Nelson wrote; "if we make these red-hot gentlemen hungry, they may be induced to come out." The investment by sea of these two harbors, but especially of Toulon, as being an important dockyard, was accordingly the opening move made by the British admiral.

On the 16th of July he approached the latter port, and from that time until August 25 a close blockade was maintained, with the exception of a very few days, during which Hood took the fleet off Nice, and thence to Genoa, to remonstrate with that republic upon its supplying the south of France with grain, and bringing back French property under neutral papers.