Not to give battle was to be guilty of direct disobedience.

To give battle was, in his judgment, to incur serious risk of defeat.

He probably suspected,--for he was of a captious and jealous temper,--that the instructions which placed him in so painful a dilemma had been framed by enemies and rivals with a design unfriendly to his fortune and his fame.

He was exasperated by the thought that he was ordered about and overruled by Russell, who, though his inferior in professional rank, exercised, as one of the Council of Nine, a supreme control over all the departments of the public service.
There seems to be no ground for charging Torrington with disaffection.
Still less can it be suspected that an officer, whose whole life had been passed in confronting danger, and who had always borne himself bravely, wanted the personal courage which hundreds of sailors on board of every ship under his command possessed.

But there is a higher courage of which Torrington was wholly destitute.