"'Captain,' they cry, 'the fight is done,They bid you send your sword!'And he answered, 'Grapple her stern and bow.They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;Out cutlasses, and board!'"—KIPLING.
On the morning of July 3, 1801, a curious scene, which might almost be described as a sea comedy, was being transacted off the coast of Alicante. Three huge French line-of-battle ships were manoeuvring and firing round a tiny little British brig-of-war. It was like three mastiffs worrying a mouse. The brig was Lord Cochrane's famous littleSpeedy, a craft so tiny that its commander could carry its entire broadside in his own pockets, and when he shaved himself in his cabin, had to put his head through the skylight and his shaving-box on the quarter-deck, in order to stand upright.
Cochrane was caught by Admiral Linois' squadron, consisting of two ships of eighty guns and one of seventy-four, on a lee shore, where escape was impossible; but from four o'clock till nine o'clock Cochrane evaded all the efforts of his big pursuers to capture him. The French ships separated on different tacks, so as to keep the littleSpeedyconstantly under the fire of one or the other; and as the British brig turned and dashed at one opening of the moving triangle or the other, the great ships thundered their broadsides at her. Cochrane threw his guns and stores overboard, and by the most ingenious seamanship evaded capture for hours, surviving some scores of broadsides. He could tack far more quickly than the gigantic ships that pursued him, and again and again theSpeedyspun round on its heel and shot off on a new course, leaving its particular pursuer with sheet shivering, and nothing but space to fire into. Once, by a quick turn, he shot past one of the 80-gun ships occupied in trying to tack, and got clear. TheDesaix, however, a seventy-four, was swiftly on the track of theSpeedy; its tall canvas under the growing breeze gave it an advantage, and it ran down to within musket-shot of theSpeedy, then yawed, bringing its whole broadside to bear, intending to sink its tiny foe with a single discharge. In yawing, however, theDesaixshot a little too far, and the weight of her broadside only smote the water, but the scattered grape cut up theSpeedy'srigging and canvas so terribly that nothing was left but surrender.
When Cochrane went on board his captor, its gallant captain refused to take his sword, saying he "could not accept the sword of an officer who had struggled for so many hours against impossibility." Cochrane and his gallant crew were summarily packed into the Frenchman's hold, and when the French in their turn were pursued by the British line-of-battle ships, as every broadside crashed on the hull of the ship that held them captive, Cochrane and his men gave a round of exultant cheers, until the exasperated Frenchmen threatened to shoot them unless they would hold their tongues—an announcement which only made the British sailors cheer a little louder. The fight between Saumarez and Linois ended with a tragedy; but it may be said to have begun with a farce.
The presence of a French squadron in the Straits of Gibraltar at this particular moment may be explained in a few sentences. Napoleon had woven afresh the web of those naval "combinations" so often torn to fragments by British seamanship and daring. He had persuaded or bullied Spain into placing under the French flag a squadron of six line-of-battle ships, including two leviathans of 112 guns each, lying in the harbour of Cadiz. With haughty, it might almost be said with insolent daring, a couple of British seventy-fours—sometimes, indeed, only one—patrolled the entrance to Cadiz, and blockaded a squadron of ten times their own force. Napoleon's plan was to draw a strong French squadron, under Admiral Linois, from Toulon, a second Spanish squadron from Ferrol, unite these with the ships lying in Cadiz, and thus form a powerful fleet of at least fifteen ships of the line, with a garnishing of frigates.
Once having got his fleet, Napoleon's imagination—which had a strong predatory bias—hesitated betwixt two uses to which it could be turned. One was to make a dash on Lisbon, and require, under threat of an instant bombardment, the delivery of all British ships and goods lying there. This ingenious plan, it was reckoned, would fill French pockets with cash and adorn French brows with glory at one stroke. The amount of British booty at Lisbon was computed—somewhat airily—at 200,000,000 pounds; its disappearance would send half the mercantile houses of Great Britain into the insolvency court, and, to quote a French state paper on the subject, "our fleet, without being buffeted about the sea, would return to Brest loaded with riches and covered with glory, and France would once more astonish Europe." The alternative scheme was to transport some 32,000 new troops to Egypt and restore French fortunes in that country.
Meanwhile Great Britain took energetic measures to wreck this new combination. Sir James Saumarez, in theCaesar, of eighty guns, with six seventy-fours, was despatched to keep guard over Cadiz; and he had scarcely reached his station there when a boat, pulling furiously over from Gibraltar, reported that Admiral Linois' squadron had made its appearance off the Rock, beating up westward. The sails of theCaesarwere instantly swung round, a many-coloured flutter of bunting summoned the rest of the squadron to follow, and Saumarez began his eager chase of the French, bearing away for the Gut under a light north-west wind. But the breeze died down, and the current swept the straggling ships westward. All day they drifted helplessly, and the night only brought a breath of air sufficient to fan them through the Straits.
Meanwhile Linois had taken refuge in the tiny curve of the Spanish coast known as the roadstead of Algeciras. Linois was, perhaps, the best French seaman of his day, having, it is true, very little French dash, but endowed with a wealth of cool resolution, and a genius for defensive warfare altogether admirable. Algeciras gave Linois exactly what he wanted, an almost unassailable position. The roadstead is open, shallow, and plentifully besprinkled with rocks, while powerful shore batteries covered the whole anchorage with their zone of fire. The French admiral anchored his ships at intervals of 500 yards from each other, and so that the lines of fire from the batteries north and south crossed in front of his ships. The French squadron carried some 3000 troops, and these were at once landed, and, manning the batteries, raised them to a high degree of effectiveness. Some fourteen heavy Spanish gunboats added enormously to the strength of the French position.
The French never doubted that Saumarez would instantly attack; the precedents of the Nile and of Copenhagen were too recent to make any doubt possible. And Saumarez did exactly what his enemies expected. Algeciras, in fact, is the battle of the Nile in miniature. But Saumarez, though he had the swift daring of Nelson, lacked his warlike genius. Nelson, in Aboukir Bay, leaped without an instant's pause on the line of his enemy, but then he had his own ships perfectly in hand, and so made the leap effective. Saumarez sent his ships into the fight headlong, and without the least regard to mutual support. At 7.50 on the morning of July 6, an uncertain gust of air carried the leading British ship, thePompée, round Cabrita; Hood, in theVenerable, lay becalmed in the offing; the flagship, with the rest of the squadron, were mere pyramids of idle canvas on the rim of the horizon.
ThePompéedrifted down the whole French line, scorched with the fire of batteries and of gunboats, as well as by the broadsides of the great French ships, and at 8.45 dropped her anchor so close to theFormidable—a ship much bigger than itself—that the Frenchman's buoy lay outside her. Then, deliberately clewing up her sails and tautening her springs, thePompéeopened a fire on her big antagonist so fierce, sustained, and deadly, that the latter found it intolerable, and began to warp closer to the shore. TheAudaciousandVenerablecame slowly up into their assigned positions, and here was a spectacle of three British ships fighting four French ships and fourteen Spanish gunboats, with heavy shore batteries manned by 3000 troops thrown into the scale! At this stage, too, thePompée'ssprings gave way, or were shot away, the current swung her round till she lay head on to the broadside of her huge antagonist, while the batteries smote her with a deadly cross-fire. A little after ten o'clock theCaesardropped anchor three cables' lengths from theIndomptable, and opened a fire which the French themselves described as "tremendous" upon her antagonist.
Linois found the British fire too destructive, and signalled his ships to cut or slip their cables, calculating that a faint air from the sea, which was beginning to blow, would drift them closer under the shelter of the batteries. Saumarez, too, noticed that his topsails were beginning to swell, and he instantly slipped his cable and endeavoured to close with theIndomptable, signalling his ships to do the same. The British cables rattled hoarsely through their hawse-holes along the whole line, and the ships were adrift; but the breeze almost instantly died away, and on the strong coast current the British ships floated helplessly, while the fire from the great shore batteries, and from the steady French decks, now anchored afresh, smote them heavily in turn. ThePompéelay for an hour under a concentrated fire without being able to bring a gun to bear in return, and then summoned by signal the boats of the squadron to tow her off.
Saumarez, meanwhile, had ordered theHannibal, under Captain Ferris, to round the head of the French line and "rake the admiral's ship." Ferris, by fine seamanship, partly sailed and partly drifted into the post assigned to him, and then grounded hopelessly, under a plunging fire from the shore batteries, within hail of the Frenchman, itself also aground. A fire so dreadful soon reduced the unfortunateHannibalto a state of wreck. Boats from theCaesarand theVenerablecame to her help, but Ferris sent them back again. They could not help him, and should not share his fate. Saumarez, as a last resource, prepared for a boat attack on the batteries, but in the whole squadron there were not enough uninjured boats to carry the marines. The British flagship itself was by this time well-nigh a wreck, and was drifting on the reefs. A flaw of wind from the shore gave the ships steerage-way, and Saumarez drew off, leaving theHannibalto its fate.
Ferris fought till his masts were gone, his guns dismounted, his bulwarks riddled, his decks pierced, and one-third of his crew killed or wounded. Then he ordered the survivors to the lower decks, and still kept his flag flying for half-an-hour after the shot-torn sails of the shattered British ships had disappeared round Cabrita. Then he struck. Here was a French triumph, indeed! A British squadron beaten off, a British seventy-four captured! It is said that when the news reached Paris the city went half-mad with exultation. Napoleon read the despatch to his ministers with eyes that danced, and almost wept, with mere gladness!
The British squadron—officers and men in such a mood as may be imagined—put into Gibraltar to refit; theCaesar, with her mainmast shot through in five places, her boats destroyed, her hull pierced; while of the sorely batteredPompéeit is recorded that she had "not a mast, yard-spar, shroud, rope, or sail" which was not damaged by hostile shot. Linois, meanwhile, got his grounded ships and his solitary prize afloat, and summoned the Cadiz squadron to join him. On the 9th these ships—six sail of the line, two of them giants of 112 guns each, with three frigates—went triumphantly, with widespread canvas and many-coloured bunting, past Gibraltar, where the shattered British squadron was lying, and cast anchor beside Admiral Linois in Algeciras Bay.
The British were labouring, meanwhile, with fierce energy, to refit their damaged ships under shelter of the guns of Gibraltar. ThePompéewas practically destroyed, and her crew were distributed amongst the other ships. Saumarez himself regarded the condition of his flagship as hopeless, but his captain, Brenton, begged permission to at least attempt to refit her. He summoned his crew aft, and told the men the admiral proposed to leave the ship behind, and asked them "what they thought about it." The men gave a wrathful roar, punctuated, it is to be feared, with many sea-going expletives, and shouted, "All hands to work day and night till she's ready!" The whole crew, down to the very powder-boys, actually worked while daylight lasted, kept it up, watch and watch, through the night, and did this from the evening of the 6th to the noon of the 12th! Probably no ship that ever floated was refitted in shorter time. In that brief period, to quote the "Naval Register," she "shifted her mainmast; fished and secured her foremast, shot through in several places; knotted and spliced the rigging, which had been cut to pieces, and bent new sails; plugged the shot-holes between wind and water; completed with stores of all kinds, anchors and cables, powder and shot, and provisions for four months."
On Sunday, July 12, 1801, the French and Spanish ships in Algeciras Bay weighed anchor, formed their line of battle as they came out, off Cabrita Point, and, stately and slow, with the two 112-gun Spaniards as a rearguard, bore up for Cadiz. An hour later the British ships warped out of the mole in pursuit. It was an amazing sight: a squadron of five sail of the line, which had been completely disabled in an action only five days before, was starting, fresh and refitted, in pursuit of a fleet double its own number, and more than double its strength! All Gibraltar crowded to watch the ships as, one by one, they cleared the pier-head. The garrison band blew itself hoarse playing "Britons, strike home," while theCaesar'sband answered in strains as shrill with "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis for glory we steer." Both tunes, it may be added, were simply submerged beneath the cheers which rang up from mole-head and batteries and dock-walls. Just as theCaesardrifted, huge and stately, past the pier-head, a boat came eagerly pulling up to her. It was crowded with jack-tars, with bandaged heads and swathed arms. A cluster of thePompée'swounded, who escaped from the hospital, bribed a boatman to pull them out to the flagship, and clamoured to be taken on board!
Saumarez had strengthened his squadron by the addition of theSuperb, with theThamesfrigate, and at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly searching the black horizon for the lights of the enemy, he hailed theSuperb, and ordered its captain, Keats, to clap on all sail and attack the enemy directly he overtook them. Saumarez, in a word, launched a single seventy-four against a fleet! Keats was a daring sailor; his ship was, perhaps, the fastest British seventy-four afloat, and his men were instantly aloft spreading every inch of canvas. Then, like a huge ghost, theSuperbglided ahead and vanished in the darkness. The wind freshened; the blackness deepened; the lights of the British squadron died out astern. But a wide sprinkle of lights ahead became visible; it was the Spanish fleet! Eagerly the daringSuperbpressed on, with slanting decks and men at quarters, but with lights hidden. At midnight the rear ships of the Spanish squadron were under the larboard bow of theSuperb—two stupendous three-deckers, with lights gleaming through a hundred port-holes—while a French two-decker to larboard of both the Spanish giants completed the line.
Keats, unseen and unsuspected, edged down with his solitary seventy-four, her heaviest guns only 18-pounders, on the quarter of the nearest three-decker. He was about to fling himself, in the gloom of the night, on three great ships, with an average of 100 guns each! Was ever a more daring feat attempted? Silently through the darkness theSuperbcrept, her canvas glimmering ghostly white, till she was within some 300 yards of the nearest Spaniard. Then out of the darkness to windward there broke on the astonished and drowsy Spaniards a tempest of flame, a whirlwind of shot. Thrice theSuperbpoured her broadside into the huge and staggering bulk of her antagonist. With the second broadside the Spaniard's topmast came tumbling down; with the third, so close was the flame of theSuperb'sguns, the Spanish sails—dry as touch-wood with lying for so many months in the sunshine of Cadiz—took fire.
Meanwhile a dramatic incident occurred. The two great Spaniards commenced to thunder their heavy broadsides into each other! Many of the Superb's shots had struck the second and more distant three-decker. Cochrane, indeed, says that theSuperbpassed actually betwixt the two gigantic Spaniards, fired a broadside, larboard and starboard, into both, and then glided on and vanished in the darkness. It is certain that theSan Hermenegildo, finding her decks torn by a hurricane of shot, commenced to fire furiously through the smoke and the night at the nearest lights. They were the lights of her own consort! She, in turn, fired at the flash of the guns tormenting her. So, under the black midnight skies, the two great Spanish ships thundered at each other, flame answering flame. They drifted ever closer. The fire of theReal Carloskindled the sails of the sister ship; the flames leaped and danced to the very mast-heads; and, still engaged in a fiery wrestle, they blew up in succession, and out of their united crews of 2000 men only a little over 200 were picked up!
TheSuperb, meanwhile, had glided ahead, leaving the three-deckers to destroy each other, and opened fire at pistol-shot distance on the French two-decker, and in thirty minutes compelled her to strike. In less than two hours of a night action, that is, this single English seventy-four had destroyed two Spanish three-deckers of 112 guns each, and captured a fine French battle-ship of 74 guns!
The British ships by this time were coming up in the rear, with every inch of canvas spread. They swept past the amazing spectacle of the two great Spaniards destroying each other, and pressed on in chase of the enemy. The wind rose to a gale. In the grey dawn theCaesarfound herself, with all her sister ships, far astern, except theVenerable, under Hood, which was hanging on the quarter of the rearmost French ship, theFormidable, a magnificent ship of 80 guns, with a gallant commander, and carrying quite too heavy metal for Hood. Hood, however, the most daring of men, exchanged broadsides at pistol-shot distance with his big antagonist, till his ship was dismasted, and was drifted by the current on the rocky shoals off San Pedro. TheCaesarcame up in time to enable its disgusted crew to see ship after ship of the flying enemy disappear safely within the sheltering batteries of Cadiz.
"Uprose the soul of him a starOn that brave day of Ocean days;It rolled the smoke from TrafalgarTo darken Austerlitz ablaze.Are we the men of old, its lightWill point us under every skyThe path he took; and must we fight,Our Nelson be our battle-cry!
He leads: we hear our Seaman's callIn the roll of battles won;For he is Britain's AdmiralTill setting of her sun."—GEORGE MEREDITH.
That Trafalgar was a great British victory, won by splendid seamanship and by magnificent courage, everybody knows. On October 21, 1805, Nelson, with twenty-seven line-of-battle ships, attacked Villeneuve, in command of a combined fleet of thirty-three line-of-battle ships. The first British gun was fired at 12.10 o'clock; at 5 o'clock the battle was over; and within those five hours the combined fleets of France and Spain were simply destroyed. No fewer than eighteen ships of the line were captured, burnt, or sunk; the rest were in flight, and had practically ceased to exist as a fighting force. But what very few people realise is that Trafalgar is only the last incident in a great strategic conflict—a warfare of brains rather than of bullets—which for nearly three years raged round a single point. For that long period the warlike genius of Napoleon was pitted in strategy against the skill and foresight of a cluster of British sailors; and the sailors won. They beat Napoleon at his own weapons. The French were not merely out-fought in the shock of battling fleets, they were out-generalled in the conflict of plotting and warlike brains which preceded the actual fight off Cape Trafalgar.
The strategy which preceded Trafalgar represents Napoleon's solitary attempt to plan a great campaign on the tossing floor of the sea. "It has an interest wholly unique," says Mahan, "as the only great naval campaign ever planned by this foremost captain of modern times." And it is a very marvellous fact that a cluster of British sailors—Jervis and Barham (a salt eighty years old) at the Admiralty, Cornwallis at Brest, Collingwood at Cadiz, and Nelson at Toulon—guessed all Napoleon's profound and carefully hidden strategy, and met it by even subtler plans and swifter resolves than those of Napoleon himself. The five hours of gallant fighting off Cape Trafalgar fill us with exultant pride. But the intellectual duel which preceded the shock of actual battle, and which lasted for nearly three years, is, in a sense, a yet more splendid story. Great Britain may well honour her naval leaders of that day for their cool and profound strategy, as much as for the unyielding courage with which such a blockade as, say, that of Brest by Cornwallis was maintained for years, or such splendid daring as that which Collingwood showed when, in theRoyal Sovereign, he broke Villeneuve's line at Trafalgar.
When in 1803 the war which brought to an end the brief peace of Amiens broke out, Napoleon framed a great and daring plan for the invasion of England. French plans for the invasion of England were somewhat numerous a century or so ago. The Committee of Public Safety in 1794, while keeping the guillotine busy in the Place de la Révolution, had its own little plan for extending the Reign of Terror, by means of an invasion, to England; and on May 27 of that year solemnly appointed one of their number to represent the Committee in England "when it was conquered." The member chosen was citizen Bon Saint André, the same hero who, in the battle of the 1st of June, fled in terror to the refuge of the French flagship's cock-pit when theQueen Charlotte, with her triple lines of guns, came too alarmingly near. But Napoleon's plans for the same object in 1803 were definite, formidable, profound. Great Britain was the one barrier in the path of his ambition. "Buonaparte," says Green, in his "Short History of the English People," "was resolute to be master of the western world, and no notions of popular freedom or sense of popular right ever interfered with his resolve.… England was now the one country where freedom in any sense remained alive.… With the fall of England, despotism would have been universal throughout Europe; and it was at England that Buonaparte resolved to strike the first blow in his career of conquest. Fifteen millions of people, he argued, must give way to forty millions."
So he formed the vast camp at Boulogne, in which were gathered 130,000 veterans. A great flotilla of boats was built, each boat being armed with one or two guns, and capable of carrying 100 soldiers. More than 1000 of such boats were built, and concentrated along twenty miles of the Channel coast, and at four different ports. A new port was dug at Boulogne, to give shelter to the main division of this flotilla, and great and powerful batteries erected for its protection. The French soldiers were exercised in embarking and disembarking till the whole process could be counted by minutes. "Let us," said Napoleon, "be masters of the Straits for six hours, and we shall be masters of the world."
When since the days of William the Conqueror were the shores of Great Britain menaced by such a peril? "There is no difficulty," said Moltke, "in getting an army into England; the trouble would be to get it out again." And, no doubt, Englishmen, fighting on their own soil and for their own hearths, would have given an invader a very rough time of it. But let it be remembered that Napoleon was a military genius of the first order, and that the 130,000 soldiers waiting on the heights above Boulogne to leap on British soil were, to quote Mahan, "the most brilliant soldiery of all time." They were the men who afterwards won Austerlitz, who struck down Prussia with a single blow at Jena, who marched as victors through the streets of Vienna and of Berlin, and fought their way to Moscow. Imagine such an army, with such a leader, landed on the green fields of Kent! In that case there might have been an English Austerlitz or Friedland. London might have shared the fate of Moscow. If Napoleon had succeeded, the fate of the world would have been changed, and Toronto and Cape Town, Melbourne and Sydney and Auckland might have been ruled by French prefects.
Napoleon himself was confident of success. He would reach London, he calculated, within four days of landing, and then he would have issued decrees abolishing the House of Lords, proclaiming a redistribution of property, and declaring England a republic. "You would never have burned your capital," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena; "you are too rich and fond of money." The London mob, he believed, would have joined him, for, as he cynically argued, "thecanailleof all nations are nearly alike."
Even Napoleon would probably have failed, however, in subduing Great Britain, and would have remained a prisoner where he came intending to be a conqueror. As he himself said when a prisoner on his way to St. Helena, "I entered into no calculation as to the manner in which I was to return"! But in the battles which must have been fought, how many English cities would have perished in flames, how many English rivers would have run red with the blood of slain men! "At Waterloo," says Alison, "England fought for victory; at Trafalgar for existence."
But "the streak of silver sea" guarded England, and for more than two years Napoleon framed subtle plans and organised vast combinations which might give him that brief six hours' command of the Strait which was all he needed, as he thought, to make himself the master of the world. The flotilla could not so much as get out of the ports, in which the acres of boats lay, in a single tide, and one half of the army of invasion must lie tossing—and, it may be suspected, dreadfully sea-sick—for hours outside these ports, waiting for the other half to get afloat. Then there remained forty miles of sea to cross. And what would happen if, say, Nelson and Collingwood, with a dozen 74-gun ships, got at work amongst the flotilla? It would be a combat between wolves and sheep. It was Nelson's chief aspiration to have the opportunity of "trying Napoleon on a wind," and the attempt to cross the Straits might have given him that chance. All Napoleon's resources and genius were therefore strained to give him for the briefest possible time the command of the Channel; and the skill and energy of the British navy were taxed to the utmost to prevent that consummation.
Now, France, as a matter of fact, had a great fleet, but it was scattered, and lying imprisoned, in fragments, in widely separated ports. There were twelve ships of the line in Toulon, twenty in Brest, five in Rochefort, yet other five in Ferrol; and the problem for Napoleon was, somehow, to set these imprisoned squadrons free, and assemble them for twenty-four hours off Boulogne. The British policy, on the other hand, was to maintain a sleepless blockade of these ports, and keep the French fleet sealed up in scattered and helpless fragments. The battle for the Straits of Dover, the British naval chiefs held, must be fought off Brest and Ferrol and Toulon; and never in the history of the world were blockades so vigilant, and stern, and sleepless maintained.
Nelson spent two years battling with the fierce north-westers of the Gulf of Lyons, keeping watch over a great French squadron in Toulon, and from May 1803 to August 1805 left his ship only three times, and for less than an hour on each occasion. The watch kept by Cornwallis off Brest, through summer and winter, for nearly three years, Mahan declares, has never, for constancy and vigilance, been excelled, perhaps never equalled, in the history of blockades. The hardship of these long sea-watches was terrible. It was waging an fight with weariness and brain-paralysing monotony, with cold and scurvy and tempest, as well as with human foes. Collingwood was once twenty-two months at sea without dropping anchor. In seventeen years of sea service—between 1793 and 1810—he was only twelve months in England.
The wonder is that the seamen of that day did not grow web-footed, or forget what solid ground felt like! Collingwood tells his wife in one letter that he had "not seen a green leaf on a tree" for fourteen months! By way of compensation, these long and stern blockades developed such a race of seamen as perhaps the world has never seen before or since; exhaustless of resource, hardy, tireless, familiar with every turn of sea life, of iron frame and an iron courage which neither tempest nor battle could shake. Great Britain, as a matter of fact, won her naval battles, not because she had better ships or heavier guns than her enemies, but only because she trained a finer race of seamen. Says Brenton, himself a gallant sailor of the period, "I have seen Spanish line-of-battle ships twenty-four hours unmooring; as many minutes are sufficient for a well-manned British ship to perform the same operation. When, on any grand ceremony, they found it necessary to cross their top-gallant yards in harbour, they began the day before; we cross ours in one minute from the deck."
But it was these iron blockades that in the long-run thwarted the plans of Napoleon and changed the fate of the world. Cornwallis off Brest, Collingwood off Rochefort, Pellew off Ferrol, Nelson before Toulon, fighting the wild gales of the Bay of Biscay and the fierce north-westers of the Gulf of Lyons, in what Mahan calls "that tremendous and sustained vigilance which reached its utmost tension in the years preceding Trafalgar," really saved England. "Those far-distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked," says Mahan, "stood between it and the dominion of the world."
An intellect so subtle and combative as Napoleon's was, of course, strained to the utmost to break or cheat the British blockades, and the story of the one crafty ruse after another which he employed to beguile the British leaders is very remarkable. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the manner in which these plain-minded, business-like British seamen, for whose mental powers Napoleon cherished the deepest contempt, fathomed his plans and shattered his combinations.
Napoleon's first plot was decidedly clever. He gathered in Brest 20,000 troops, ostensibly for a descent upon Ireland. This, he calculated, would preoccupy Cornwallis, and prevent him moving. The Toulon fleet was to run out with the first north-west wind, and, as long as a British look-out ship was in sight, would steer east, as though making for Egypt; but when beyond sight of British eyes the fleet was to swing round, run through the Straits, be joined off Cadiz by the Rochefort squadron, and sweep, a great fleet of at least sixteen sail of the line, past the Scilly Islands to Boulogne. Napoleon calculated that Nelson would be racing in the direction of Egypt, Cornwallis would be redoubling his vigilance before Brest, at the exact moment the great Boulogne flotilla was carrying its 130,000 invading Frenchmen to Dover! Napoleon put the one French admiral as to whose resolve and daring he was sure—Latouche Treville—in command of the Toulon fleet; but before the moment for action came Treville died, and Napoleon had to fall back upon a weaker man, Villeneuve.
He changed his plans to suit the qualities of his new admiral—the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to break out, sail separately to a rendezvous in the West Indies, and, once joined, spread havoc through the British possessions there. "I think," wrote Napoleon, "that the sailing of these twenty ships of the line will oblige the English to despatch over thirty in pursuit." So the blockades everywhere would be weakened, and the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, doubling back to Europe, were to raise the blockade off Ferrol and Brest, and the Brest squadron was to land 18,000 troops, under Augereau, in Ireland, while the Grand Army of Boulogne was to cross the Straits, with Napoleon at its head. Thus Great Britain and Ireland would be invaded simultaneously.
The trouble was to set the scheme going by the release of the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons. Nelson's correspondence shows that he guessed Napoleon's strategy. If the Toulon fleet broke loose, he wrote, he was sure its course would be held for the Atlantic, and thither he would follow it. In the meanwhile he kept guard so steadfastly that the great French strategy could not get itself started. In December 1804 war broke out betwixt Britain and Spain, and this gave Napoleon a new ally and a new fleet. Napoleon found he had nearly sixty line-of-battle ships, French or Spanish, to weave into his combinations, and he framed—to use Mahan's words—"upon lines equal, both in boldness and scope, to those of the Marengo and Austerlitz campaigns, the immense strategy which resulted in Trafalgar." The Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, as before, were to break out separately, rendezvous in the West Indies, return by a different route to European waters, pick up the French and Spanish ships in Ferrol, and then sweep through the narrow seas.
The Rochefort squadron duly escaped; Villeneuve, too, in command of the Toulon squadron, aided by the weather, evaded Nelson's watchfulness and disappeared towards the east. Nelson, however, suspected the real plan, and with fine insight took up a position which must have intercepted Villeneuve; but that admiral found the weather too rough for his ships, and ran back into Toulon. "These gentlemen," said Nelson, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale. We have faced them for twenty-one months, and not lost a spar!" The Rochefort squadron was, of course, left by its own success wandering in space, a mere cluster of sea-vagrants.
By March 1805, Napoleon had a new combination prepared. In the ports between Brest and Toulon were scattered no less than sixty-seven French or Spanish ships of the line. Ganteaume, with his squadron, was to break out from Brest; Villeneuve, with his, from Toulon; both fleets were to rendezvous at Martinique, return by an unusual route, and appear off Boulogne, a great fleet of thirty-five French ships of the line.
About the end of June the Toulon fleet got safely out—Nelson being, for once, badly served by his frigates—picked up additional ships off Cadiz, and disappeared on its route to the West Indies. Nelson, misled by false intelligence, first went eastward, then had to claw back through the Straits of Gibraltar in the teeth of strong westerly gales, and plunged over the horizon in fierce pursuit of Villeneuve. But the watch kept by Cornwallis over Ganteaume in Brest was so close and stern that escape was impossible, and one-half of Napoleon's combination broke down. Napoleon despatched swift ships on Villeneuve's track, summoning him back to Ferrol, where he would find a squadron of fifteen French and Spanish ships ready to join him. Villeneuve, Napoleon believed, had thoroughly deceived Nelson. "Those boasted English," he wrote, "who claim to know of everything, know nothing of it,"i.e.of Villeneuve's escape and course. But the "boasted English," as a matter of fact, did know all about it, and in place of weakening their forces in the Bay of Biscay, strengthened them. Meanwhile Nelson, with ten ships of the line, was hard on the track of Villeneuve with eighteen. At Barbadoes, Nelson was sent a hundred miles out of his course by false intelligence, and that hundred miles just enabled Villeneuve to double back towards Europe.
Nelson divined this plan, and followed him with the fiercest energy, sending off, meanwhile, his fastest brig to warn the Admiralty. Villeneuve, if he picked up the Ferrol and Rochefort squadrons, would arrive off Brest with forty line-of-battle ships; if he raised the blockade, and added Ganteaume's squadron to his own, he might appear off Boulogne with sixty great ships! Napoleon calculated on British blunders to aid him. "We have not to do with a far-sighted, but with a very proud Government," he wrote. The blunder Napoleon hoped the British Admiralty would make was that of weakening the blockading squadrons in order to pursue Villeneuve's fleet, and thus release the imprisoned French squadrons, making a great concentration possible.
But this was exactly the blunder into which the Admiralty refused to be tempted. When the news that Villeneuve was on his way back to Europe reached the Admiralty, the First Lord, Barham, an old sailor, eighty years of age, without waiting to dress himself, dictated orders which, without weakening the blockades at any vital point, planted a fleet, under Sir Robert Calder, west of Finisterre, and right in Villeneuve's track; and if Calder had been Nelson, Trafalgar might have been fought on July 22, instead of October 21. Calder fought, and captured two of Villeneuve's ships, but failed to prevent the junction of Villeneuve's fleet with the squadron in Ferrol, and was court-martialled for his failure—victory though he called it. But this partial failure does not make less splendid the promptitude shown by the British Admiralty. "The English Admiralty," Napoleon reasoned, "could not decide the movements of its squadron in twenty-four hours." As a matter of fact, Barham decided the British strategy in almost as many minutes!
Meanwhile Nelson had reached the scene; and, like his ship, worn out with labours, sailed for Portsmouth, for what proved his last visit to England. On August 13, Villeneuve sailed from Ferrol with twenty-nine ships. He had his choice between Brest, where Cornwallis was keeping guard, with Boulogne beyond, and where Napoleon was watching eagerly for the white topsails of his fleet; or Cadiz, where Collingwood with a tiny squadron held the Spanish fleet strictly bottled up.
Villeneuve's true course was Boulogne, but Cornwallis lay in his path with over thirty sail of the line, and Villeneuve's nerve failed him. On August 21 he swung round and bore up for Cadiz; and with the turn of the helm which swung Villeneuve's ship away from Boulogne, Napoleon's last chance of invading England vanished. Villeneuve pushed Collingwood's tiny squadron aside and entered Cadiz, where the combined fleet now numbered nearly forty ships of the line, and Collingwood, with delightful coolness, solemnly resumed his blockade—four ships, that is, blockading forty! Napoleon gave way to a tempest of rage when his fleet failed to appear off Boulogne, and he realised that the British sailors he despised had finally thwarted his strategy. A French writer has told how Daru, his secretary, found him walking up and down his cabinet with agitated steps. With a voice that shook, and in half-strangled exclamations, he cried, "What a navy! What sacrifices for nothing! What an admiral! All hope is gone! That Villeneuve, instead of entering the Channel, has taken refuge in Ferrol. It is all over. He will be blockaded there." Then with that swift and terrible power of decision in which he has never been surpassed, he flung the long-cherished plan of invading England out of his brain, and dictated the orders which launched his troops on the road which led to Austerlitz and Jena, and, beyond, to the flames of Moscow and the snows of the great retreat, and which finally led Napoleon himself to St. Helena. Villeneuve's great fleet meanwhile lay idle in Cadiz, till, on October 20, the ill-fated French admiral led his ships out to meet Nelson in his last great sea-fight.
"Wherever the gleams of an English fireOn an English roof-tree shine,Wherever the fire of a youth's desireIs laid upon Honour's shrine,Wherever brave deeds are treasured and told,In the tale of the deeds of yore,Like jewels of price in a chain of goldAre the name and the fame he bore.
Wherever the track of our English shipsLies white on the ocean foam,His name is sweet to our English lipsAs the names of the flowers at home;Wherever the heart of an English boyGrows big with a deed of worth,Such names as his name have begot the same,Such hearts will bring it to birth."—E. NESBIT.
It was the night of October 20, 1805, a night moonless and black. In the narrow waters at the western throat of the Straits of Gibraltar, at regular intervals of three minutes through the whole night, the deep voice of a gun broke out and swept, a pulse of dying sound, almost to either coast, while at every half-hour a rocket soared aloft and broke in a curve of stars in the black sky. It was one of Nelson's repeating frigates signalling to the British fleet, far off to the south-west, Villeneuve's movements. Nelson for more than a week had been trying to daintily coax Villeneuve out of Cadiz, as an angler might try to coax a much-experienced trout from the cool depths of some deep pool. He kept the main body of his fleet sixty leagues distant—west of Cape St. Mary—but kept a chain of frigates within signalling distance of each other betwixt Cadiz and himself. He allowed the news that he had detached five of his line-of-battle ships on convoy duty to the eastward to leak through to the French admiral, but succeeded in keeping him in ignorance of the fact that he had called in under his flag five ships of equal force from the westward.
On October 19, Villeneuve, partly driven by hunger, and by the news that a successor was on the road from Paris to displace him, and partly tempted by the belief that he had before him a British fleet of only twenty-one ships of the line, crept out of Cadiz with thirty-three ships of the line—of which three were three-deckers—and seven frigates. Nelson had twenty-seven sail of the line with four frigates. The wind was light, and all through the 20th, Villeneuve's fleet, formed in seven columns—theSantissima Trinidadtowering like a giant amongst them—moved slowly eastward. Nelson would not alarm his foe by making too early an appearance over the sky-line. His frigates signalled to him every few minutes, through sixty miles of sea-air, the enemy's movements; but Nelson himself held aloof till Villeneuve was too far from Cadiz to make a dash back to it and safety. All through the night of the 20th, Villeneuve's great fleet—a procession of mighty phantoms—was dimly visible against the Spanish coast, and the British frigates sent the news in alternate pulses of sound and flame to Nelson, by this time eagerly bearing up from Cape St. Mary.
The morning of the 21st broke misty, yet bright. The sea was almost like a floor of glass. The faintest of sea-airs blew. A lazy Atlantic swell rolled at long intervals towards the Straits, and the two fleets at last were visible to each other. Villeneuve's ships stretched a waving and slightly curved line, running north and south, with no regularity of order. The British fleet, in two compact and parallel columns, half a mile apart, came majestically on from the west. The ships in each column followed each other so closely that sometimes the bow of one was thrust past the quarter of the ship in advance of it. Nelson, in theVictory, headed one column, Collingwood, in theRoyal Sovereign, led the other, and each flagship, it was to be noted, led with a clear interval between itself and its supports.
Villeneuve had a tactician's brain, and his battle-plan was admirable. In a general order, issued just before leading out his fleet, he told his captains, "There is nothing to alarm us in the sight of an English fleet. Their 64-gun ships have not 500 men on board; they are not more brave than we are; they are harassed by a two-years' cruise; they have fewer motives to fight well!" Villeneuve explained that the enemy would attack in column, the French would meet the attack in close line of battle; and, with a touch of Nelson's spirit, he urged his captains to take every opportunity of boarding, and warned them that every ship not under fire would be counted a defaulter.
Nelson's plan was simple and daring. The order of sailing was to be the order of battle. Collingwood leading one column, and he the other, would pierce the enemy's lines at points which would leave some twelve of the enemy's ships to be crushed betwixt the two British lines. Nelson, whose brooding genius forecast every changing eddy of battle, gave minute instructions on a score of details. To prevent mistakes amid the smoke and the fight, for example, he had the hoops on the masts of every British ship painted yellow; every ship was directed to fly a St. George's ensign, with the Union Jack at the fore-topmast, and another flying from the top-gallant stays. That he would beat the enemy's fleet he calmly took for granted, but he directed that every effort should be made to capture its commander-in-chief. Nelson crowned his instructions with the characteristic remark, that "in case signals were obscure, no captain can do wrong if he places his ship alongside of an enemy."