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1805.]

NELSON'S CHASE AFTER THE COMBINED FLEET.

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new pretexts for decrying the ambition of France. He would not hesitate. Genoa should be annexed, and should lend the aid of her ships and sailors to the French marine.*

From the prorogation in July till the end of October, there had never been such suspense and anxiety in England since the May of 1588, when the Spanish Armada had sailed down the Tagus, and an agent of Elizabeth's Council had written home that he judged they would soon be in the English quarters, "so that the lightning and the thunder-clap will be both in a moment." On the 19th of July the British fleet was at anchor in the bay of Gibraltar. On the 20th, Nelson writes in his Diary, "I went on shore for the first time since June 16, 1803, and, from having my foot out of the Victory, two years wanting ten days." What duty had occupied the great admiral during this period? The duty of long watching and waiting; of pursuing the enemy without any certain knowledge of his destination, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, and then to the West Indies. He had been appointed to the chief command of the fleet in the Mediterranean at the breaking out of the war, and had sailed from Spithead on the 20th of May. On the 1st of August, 1804, he wrote a very remarkable letter to the Lord Mayor of London, which gave the British people a better notion of the man than the speech of Alderman Curtis in the Common Council. Nelson acknowledged the honour of the Resolutions, "thanking me, as commanding the fleet blockading Toulon. . . . . . I beg to inform your lordship that the port of Toulon has never been blockaded by me; quite the reverse. Every opportunity has been offered the enemy to put to sea; for it is there that we hope to realize the hopes and expectations of our country, and I trust that they will not be disappointed." On the 18th of January, 1805, the Toulon fleet came out. Nelson was at anchor off the coast of Sardinia. The weather was stormy. He could hear nothing of the French fleet; and he sailed away for Egypt. He returned; and at Malta found that the French fleet, having been dispersed in a gale, had put back for Toulon. On the 4th of April, he learnt that the French fleet, under admiral Villeneuve, had again put to sea on the 31st of March. They were joined by the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, having four thousand five hundred troops on board. The combined fleet numbered twenty sail of the line and ten frigates. Nelson had ten sail of the line, and three frigates. He had guessed their destination, and wrote accordingly to the Admiralty. Pitt, with a patriotic exultation, told the Speaker on the 6th of June that Nelson in his letters received that day said, "he was sailing after the combined fleet to the West Indies, and if he did not find them there he would follow them to the Antipodes." § The Toulon fleet had the start of Nelson more than a month. He was at Barbadoes on the 4th of June; but he was again deceived by false intelligence. The combined fleet had appeared before several West India islands Martinique, Granada, Antigua; but they had not ventured to stop. They fled back to Europe, with Nelson after them. On the 3rd of May there was in London a "great alarm for the West Indies." || Two months

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442

SIR ROBERT CALDER'S NAVAL ACTION.

[1805. later it was known that Nelson had saved the West Indies. But he was baffled in his great hope of encountering the French and Spaniards. That exploit was reserved for sir Robert Calder, who, with fifteen line of battle ships, fell in with them, sixty leagues west of Cape Finisterre, on the 22nd of July. After an engagement of four hours, the English admiral captured two Spanish ships, an eighty-four and a seventy-four. The French and Spanish fleet got into Cadiz a month after the action. The British people were indignant that Calder had not done more. He was tried in December by Court Martial, and was reprimanded "for error of judgment." Nelson had traversed the Bay of Biscay, and had sought the enemy on the northwest coast of Ireland, in the belief that the combined fleet was about to make a descent there. He then thought that it was his duty to reinforce the Channel Fleet, and he joined admiral Cornwallis off Ushant. The course of the French and Spaniards was still unknown. Nelson, worn out with the fatigue and anxiety of his chase of the enemy, went home in the Victory. At Portsmouth he learnt of the action of the 22nd of July. The encounter with admiral Calder had been sufficient to disturb the plans of Napoleon for the invasion of England. Villeneuve did not hazard a nearer approach to the English Channel than Ferrol and Corunna. He then altered his course, steering southward; and was safe in Cadiz on the 20th of August. In that port six Spanish ships of the line had been previously at anchor. Collingwood was at hand with four sail of the line; and on the 21st he was reconnoitring the port in which thirty-five French and Spanish sail of the line lay ready for sea. The British squadron cruising off Cadiz was reinforced in August and September. The French admiral had little prospect of obeying his orders to bring his fleet fresh and entire into the British Channel.

On the 3rd of August, Napoleon was again at Boulogne. The next day he reviewed the infantry of this great Army of England. In one line of battle were drawn up a hundred thousand men-a line which occupied more than three leagues, reaching from Cap Alpreck to Cap Grisnez. He inspected his flotilla, now all united in the four ports of Ambleteuse, Wimereux, Boulogne, and Etaples. The whole force, ready to embark, comprised a hundred and thirty-two thousand men, and fifteen thousand horses, with nearly six hundred pieces of artillery. There were, moreover, twenty-four thousand troops on the Texel, ready to embark, under the command of Marmont. To prepare the Army of England for their great adventure, the troops were brought down to the beach, where the gun-boats were lying to receive them. Every man had his appointed boat and his appointed place. Again, and again, men and horses were embarked and disembarked. It was found that an hour and a quarter was sufficient to get on board the right wing of the army, consisting of twenty-six thousand men, under the command of Davoust; and it was estimated that in two hours after the order had been given, the whole of this mighty force might be out of its harbours. But there was no protecting fleet of men-of-war in the Channel. Where were Villeneuve and Gravina? Where was Ganteaume, with the Brest squadron ? Napoleon had no doubt that these fleets would unite, with a force sufficient to give battle to the British commanders. Let him once be assured that they were at hand, and not an hour should be lost in making the attempt that

1805.]

NAPOLEON'S ANXIETY-BREAKS UP THE CAMP.

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had been preparing for two years and a half. Let France be mistress of the passage for twelve hours, and England has lived. All along the coast signals had been prepared to announce when the French and Spanish fleets should have appeared on the horizon. No signal was given. On the 22nd of August Napoleon received a despatch, by a courier from Lauriston at Ferrol, "We are going to Brest." He dictated instantly a letter to Ganteaume"Set out and come here. Let us avenge six centuries of insult and shame." He dictated a letter to Villeneuve-" I hope you are at Brest. Set out; lose not a moment; and to be united with my squadrons come into the Channel. England is ours. We are all ready. All is embarked. Appear within twenty-four hours and all is finished." By the courier which brought Napoleon the despatch of Lauriston, admiral Decrès, the minister of marine, who was also at Boulogne, received a despatch from Villeneuve, which truly described the difficulties of his position. The emperor went into a tremendous passion; denouncing Villeneuve as a fool and a traitor. He was violent with Decrès, who offered him sound advice; but Decrès was a man of firmness, and he persuaded the emperor to give up his project for a season. The tempests of the equinox were at hand; the English were prepared to encounter the combined fleet. After several days of irresolution, which to men of dominant will is misery, he determined to relinquish for a season the invasion of England, and to march the army of the camp of Boulogne into Germany. He left Boulogne on the 2nd of September.

On the 26th of September, Mr. Pitt gave to lord Malmesbury a "most minute and clear account" of the proceedings which he had taken in negotiating his great Alliances with Russia and Austria. "Never was any measure, as far as human foresight could go, better combined or better negotiated."+ Its failure, Malmesbury adds, "was solely in the execution." Neither Mr. Pitt nor the Allies had sufficiently taken into account the extraordinary rapidity of the operations of Napoleon, or the prodigious faculty of combination with which he had organized the movements of his various armies. The emperor called upon the Senate to raise eighty thousand conscripts. He told them, on the 23rd of September, that the wishes of the eternal enemies of the continent are at last fulfilled. Austria and Russia have joined England. The Austrian army has crossed the Inn; the elector of Bavaria has been driven away from his capital; all my hopes of the preservation of peace have vanished. The elector of Bavaria was the ally of France. Bonaparte left Paris on the 24th. The army at Boulogne had broken up its camp. Napoleon had formed the plan of a campaign which should unite this army with two other great divisions of his forces-that of Hanover, under Bernadotte; and that of Holland, under Marmont. The army of Boulogne marched to the Rhine, which river Napoleon crossed at Strasbourg on the 1st of October. In Franconia he would join the other two armies; cross the Danube below Ulm, in the neighbourhood of Donauwerth; and cut off the Austrians before the junction of the Russians. By the end of October, the rapidity of his

* "Si nous sommes maîtres douze heures de la traversée, l'Angleterre a vécu" (an idiom which has the meaning of "has ceased to live").-Letter of Napoleon to Decrès, in Thiers. + Malmesbury, "Diaries," &c. vol. iv. p. 347.

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MARCH OF NAPOLEON INTO GERMANY.

[1805. movements, and their evident design, had caused alarm in London. "The newspapers," writes Wilberforce, " will have excited in your mind the same fears they have called forth in mine, that Bonaparte has been too rapid for the Austrians. . . . I cannot help fearing, from the accounts the papers give us, that the French have penetrated so far as to get between the

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Russians, who were coming forward, and the Austrians." * This was not an idle fear. Ney's division had defeated the Austrians at Elchingen, and at Guntzburg. Large detached masses had capitulated at other places without fighting. Napoleon's marshals had very speedily reduced the Austrians in Bavaria to a force of about thirty thousand men at Ulm. The wall and bastions and ditch of this city offered no adequate protection; for Napoleon had

*Wilberforce," Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 48.

1805.]

SURRENDER OF AUSTRIANS AT ULM-NELSON.

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obtained possession of the adjacent heights from which he could bombard a place from which escape was impossible. He summoned general Mack, the commander of the imperialists, to surrender. Mack returned an indignant answer; but finally agreed to surrender in eight days if he were not relieved. He considered that the Russians were close at hand. Napoleon knew otherwise. But time was of the greatest value to him; and in an interview with Mack, he persuaded him to surrender at once.

On the 20th of October, thirty thousand men, with sixty pieces of cannon, marched out of the fortress, and laid down their arms. The conqueror made an address to some of the officers, telling them that he wanted nothing on the Continenthe wanted ships, colonies, and commerce.

"O'er England's seas his new dominions plann'd,

While the red bolt yet flamed in Nelson's hand."

Rumours of this inauspicious beginning of the operations of the Alliance that was to have saved Europe, had reached London very quickly. On the 2nd of November, Pitt said to Malmesbury, "Don't believe it—it is all a fiction." On Sunday, the 3rd, a Dutch newspaper had reached Downing-street, with the terms of the capitulation of Mack given at full length. Mr. Pitt and lord Mulgrave came to lord Malmesbury to translate the account, for the clerks of the Foreign-office who were able to translate Dutch were absent. "I observed but too clearly the effect it had on Pitt, though he did his utmost to conceal it. . . . . This visit has left an indelible impression on my mind, as his manner and look were not his own, and gave me, in spite of myself, a foreboding of the loss with which we were threatened." + On the 7th of November, the news arrived of the crowning glory of Trafalgar.

Nelson was enjoying a little quiet at his house in the pretty village of Merton, in Surrey, when he learnt that the French and Spanish fleet, joined by the Ferrol squadron, had succeeded in entering Cadiz. His resolution was quickly taken. He went to the Admiralty and offered his services, which were joyfully accepted. Nelson was full of hope. "Depend on it," he said to captain Blackwood, "I shall yet give M. Villeneuve a drubbing." He formed his plans of attack during the short time of preparation, when the Victory had to be refitted, and other ships were to be got ready to accompany him. Lord Sidmouth told Mr. Rush, the American ambassador, that in the course of a visit he had received from Nelson, three weeks before the battle of Trafalgar, he described the plan of it, with bits of paper on a table, as it was afterwards fought. Yet he had a presentiment of his own fate. The coffin. which was made out of the mast of l'Orient was deposited at an upholsterer's. He desired its history to be engraved on its lid, saying that he should probably want it on his return. When he arrived at Portsmouth on the 14th of September, the enthusiasm of the people reached that height which sometimes gives a character of sublimity to the movements of multitudes acting with one heart. They wept; they blessed him; they even knelt as he passed along. The cheer which went up from thousands of voices as his

* "Ulm and Trafalgar," by J. W. Croker.

+"Malmesbury," vol. iv. p. 347.

Rush. "Residence at the Court of London," p. 459.

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