Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

154

forty-ﬁ ve million francs, and a reserve fund was created. It was granted the

monopoly of issuing banknotes in Paris, and it absorbed the Caisse

d’Escompte du Commerce (Commercial Discount Bank), a rival bank. In

return, the Bank agreed to discount all the rescriptions of the receveurs , which

were collectable after one or two months. Both trade and treasury were able,

with the Bank’s help, to weather the storm without excessive damage.

Bonaparte’s prestige did not suffer. Since England had torn up the Treaty

of Amiens, and had begun hostilities without bothering to declare war (as

was her custom), he had every opportunity to place all of the blame on her

without any fear of being contradicted. The French nation, under attack, was

left with no alternative but to gather around its leader, and its determination

was strengthened in the face of new royalist plots, which were now being

encouraged and subsidised by the British government. Thus the ﬁ rst conse-

quence of the renewed war was that it yielded Bonaparte the imperial title

and the hereditary succession.

Cadoudal had never ceased to keep his co-conspirators at the highest

pitch; two of his agents had been imprisoned since the beginning of 1803.

On 21 August he landed at Biville in Seine-Inférieure, and made his way to

Paris where he was kept in hiding by numerous accomplices. By his own

account he wanted to kidnap Bonaparte, not assassinate him; but having

decided to kill him in case of resistance, his attempt would certainly have

ended in murder. The arrival of the comte d’Artois was to be the signal, but

he never came. In the meantime, royalist unrest revived everywhere, and

bands of marauders reappeared in the west. In another quarter, General

Lajolais was trying to bring Pichegru and Moreau together. Relations between

these two had already been established by a certain Abbé David, who had

been arrested late in 1802. Lajolais left for London at the end of August

1803, and returned in December, followed shortly by Pichegru. Moreau

agreed to a meeting, but did not commit himself to joining the conspiracy,

seeing that the old Chouan leader, Cadoudal, had a hand in the affair. Finally, a

third branch of the conspiracy was being uncovered by Méhée de La Touche,

an ex-Jacobin turned agent provocateur , having contacted certain émigré circles

in England, he proposed that they join hands with the republican conspira-

tors. He then managed to make his way to Munich, where the English agent

Drake informed him of his own schemes to raise the Rhineland in revolt and

to keep open communications with Alsace in order to prepare the entry of

the duc d’Enghien at the head of a corps of émigrés.

The First Consul was in fact surrounded by treachery, of which he knew

but a fraction. In Dresden, the comte d’Antraigues, Alexander’s spy, was being

kept fully informed about Bonaparte’s private life by ‘ l’amie de Paris ’, one of

155

france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

Josephine’s intimates. Another source, ‘ l’ami de Paris ’ (who seems to have been

either Daru, future intendant-general of the Grande Armée, or his father – at

any rate, an associate of Talleyrand), furnished d’Antraigues with diplomatic

documents and information about Bonaparte’s policies. Under the unin-

spired guidance of Chief Judge Régnier, the police had run up against a blank

wall, and even though Fouché had put his intelligence system at the service

of the First Consul, Bonaparte was still very much in the dark at the begin-

ning of 1804. In February he decided to take action. Two prisoners revealed

under torture the imminent arrival of ‘a prince’, and they also told of Moreau’s

treacherous negotiations. Moreau was immediately arrested, and terror

became the order of the day: frontiers were closed, homes searched, the jury

system suspended, and Murat became governor of Paris. The police were not

long in laying hold of Pichegru and Cadoudal. Meanwhile, Méhée de La

Touche made it known that the duc d’Enghien was residing at Ettenheim, in

Baden, not far from Strasbourg, and that the émigrés were gathering at

Offenburg. Bonaparte allowed that the duke was the ‘prince’ whom the

conspirators were awaiting, and on 10 March, after holding a council which

included both Fouché and Talleyrand, he decided to kidnap the duc d’Enghien.

The kidnapping operation was entrusted to the former marquis de

Caulaincourt with General Ordener as his subordinate. Caulaincourt was

unable to ﬁ nd any émigrés at Offenburg, but at Ettenheim Ordener arrested

the duc d’Enghien on the night of 14 March. On the twentieth the Privy

Council set the fatal machinery in motion. The duke was brought to

Vincennes at ﬁ ve o’clock in the evening, dragged before a military commis-

sion at eleven, and shot at two in the morning. Although there was nothing

in his papers to link him with Cadoudal, there was proof that he was in

England’s pay and that he yearned to lead an invasion of Alsace. He was

condemned not as a conspirator but as an émigré being paid by a foreign

nation to invade France. Had he been arrested on French soil or in enemy

territory, the law would have prescribed the death penalty. But by kidnap-

ping him on neutral soil, Bonaparte blatantly compromised the interests of

France and provided the continental powers with the pretext for which they

were searching.

The conspirators were now placed on trial. Twenty were condemned to

death on 9 June. Bonaparte pardoned twelve, most of them nobles, and the

rest (including Cadoudal) were guillotined. Pichegru was found strangled

in his cell. Moreau was acquitted, but a second verdict was ordered; this

time the judges imposed a two-year sentence, which was commuted to

banishment. During the course of the trial, the bourgeoisie and the salons

seethed with ferment. ‘The hate and vituperation aimed at the government’,

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

156

wrote Roederer on 14 June, ‘have become as violent and pronounced as ever

I saw them in the time before the Revolution.’ Such sentiments were

evidenced in the theatres and at the trial itself. The cause of national soli-

darity suffered a temporary setback; Chateaubriand, who had accepted a

diplomatic post, resigned. But the dissidents did not consider going to the

people, the press kept its silence, and the country as a whole either remained

indifferent or supported Bonaparte.

Bonaparte’s entourage, and Fouché who was anxious to regain favour,

urged the First Consul to strike while the iron was hot. They suggested to

him that the establishment of a hereditary succession would disarm the

assassins: childish argument, for if Bonaparte had been murdered, the

regime would surely have collapsed. What really put an end to the attempts

on his life was the terror and the perfection of police surveillance.

Nevertheless, the assemblies pretended to take the argument seriously, so as

to preserve for themselves a place in the future order. The republicans,

moreover, were not unsatisﬁ ed by the execution of the duc d’Enghien: ‘I am

delighted,’ said the tribune Curee. ‘Bonaparte is made of the same stuff as

the Convention.’ On 23 March the Senate announced that the time had come

‘to change the institutions’. The Conseil d’État, when consulted, objected to

the principle of hereditary rule, but on 23 April Curée led the Tribunate in

a resolution for its adoption. Bonaparte then made his reply to the Senate,

saying, ‘You have decided on the necessity for hereditary rule.’ The Senate,

which had done nothing of the kind, acquiesced. Between 16 and 18 May a

new constitution was drafted, which was then promulgated by Senate

decree on 28 Floréal, Year XII (18 May 1804), and ﬁ nally ratiﬁ ed by a pleb-

iscite. The ‘government of the Republic’ was entrusted to a hereditary

emperor who was to receive a civil list of twenty-ﬁ ve million francs and the

revenues from crown lands, which were distinguished from his personal

estate. He was given a free hand in the establishment of an imperial court

and in the regulation of the affairs of the royal family.

The main problem was to deﬁ ne the rules for the succession. ‘Hereditary’

had always been synonymous with primogeniture, but Bonaparte had no

male issue and was not even the eldest son of his family. The simplest solu-

tion would have been to permit the emperor to designate his own successor,

as in the time of the Roman Empire. In fact, Bonaparte reserved the right to

adopt an heir, while it was denied to those who would succeed him. Even

so, he was much too devoted to his family ‘clan’ to leave them completely

out in the cold. His brothers, however, refused to renounce their rights in

favour of Louis Bonaparte’s son, Charles, the heir-presumptive. Overladen

with riches and honours, they knew no gratitude, and with the support of

157

france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

their mother created a thousand difﬁ culties. Lucien had just married

Madame Jouberthon, the widow of a bankrupt speculator – a marriage

hardly calculated to enhance the imperial dignity. Jérôme, bound for the

Antilles in a man-of-war, proceeded to the United States and married the

daughter of a merchant. Maria-Paola, rechristened Pauline, took as her

second husband Prince Borghese without consulting her brother. Then there

was Maria-Annunziata – now elegantly Caroline, the wife of Murat – and

Maria-Anna – transformed into Elisa and married to that hopeless Corsican

Bacciochi: both of these sisters raged because Bonaparte had not made them

princesses. Finally, it was decided that failing a natural or an adopted heir

the succession would fall to Joseph, and after him, Louis. Lucien, having

refused to divorce his wife, was excluded and left for Italy.

As in Year X, the Senate found this an opportune moment to express its

wish (this time ofﬁ cially) for constitutional guarantees. The Senate wanted

to become a hereditary body with a veto power which would enable it to

protect the fundamental rights of citizens. As for the Corps Législatif,

Fontanes asked that it be granted the right to discuss laws, and that its pres-

idency, which ofﬁ ce he in fact occupied, be given some degree of perma-

nence. The net result, however, was that the Senate alone obtained the right

to appoint two permanent committees charged respectively with the main-

tenance of individual liberty and with the liberty of the press. They were

empowered only to hear complaints, and to declare after conducting an

investigation that there was a ‘presumption’ that these liberties had been

violated. The police, on the other hand, were reorganised and brought under

even greater central control; Fouché became minister again (10 July), and

France was divided into four arrondissements headed by four councillors of

state responsible to him. Apart from this, government institutions under-

went little change. Napoleon took advantage of the occasion to assume the

right to choose an unlimited number of senators, and he decreed that the

princes, his brothers, together with the six grand dignitaries of the Empire,

be made members of the Senate ex officio .

By instituting the grand dignitaries and the grand ofﬁ cers – the

latter comprising eighteen marshals and numerous chamberlains – the

Constitution of Year XII marked a stage in the creation of a new aristocracy.

The imperial court burgeoned in the splendour of its luxury, and the decree

of 24 Messidor, Year XII (13 July 1804), concerning precedence, extended a

protocol of etiquette to the entire administration. The cause of national soli-

darity was not long in resuming its course. Napoleon henceforth openly

embraced the idea of creating a new nobility, and he wasted no time turning

the Legion of Honour to that purpose: it became simply a decoration, much

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

158

like the old chivalric orders. When ordaining that the representatives of the

electoral colleges be invited to his coronation, he speciﬁ ed that they be

chosen from among the ancient families which enjoyed public esteem. On

the day of the ceremony he vented his contempt for the masses: ‘The presi-

dents of the cantons and the presidents of the electoral colleges, the army

– these are the true people of France,’ and not, ‘twenty or thirty thousand

ﬁ shmongers and people of that ilk . . . they are only the corrupt and ignorant

dregs of society.’

Consequently, Napoleon could not regard the popular mandate as a sufﬁ -

cient foundation for the new legitimacy. Like Pippin the Short, he asked for

the pope’s consecration so that divine right might be restored and written

into the catechism. Negotiations were conducted in Paris between Caprara,

the pope’s representative, and Talleyrand and Bernier; and in Rome between

Cardinal Consalvi and Cardinal Fesch, the emperor’s uncle, who as a former

constitutional priest had been appointed archbishop of Lyon, cardinal and

ambassador to the Vatican. In view of the recent execution of the duc

d’Enghien, Pius VII had reason enough to hesitate, fearing as he did to

offend the great powers; but since he hoped to obtain modiﬁ cations of the

Organic Articles, and perhaps even the restoration of the Legations, he ended

by giving his consent. The royalists broke out in furious uproar, and Joseph

de Maistre wrote that the pope had ‘lowered himself to the point of being

an inconsequential punchinello’. For all his trouble, Pius received nothing

except the submission of the remaining constitutional bishops who had

persisted in their recalcitrance; even so, Bishop Saurine of Strasbourg

continued to refuse to disavow the civil constitution of the clergy. Pius was

not even spared a ﬁ nal humiliation. At Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804

Napoleon took the crown from the altar and placed it on his own head.

Then, after the pope had retired, the new emperor took an oath to liberty

and equality. Josephine, too, was crowned by her husband, but on the eve of

the coronation she had played the nasty trick of informing the pope that her

marriage had been only a civil one; and so Napoleon had to consent to a

religious ceremony which would make divorce more difﬁ cult.

If the theatricality of the coronation ritual, which David was to depict,

gave Napoleon the reassurance he wanted, it in no way added to his pres-

tige. The French people watched with a sceptical eye the strange procession

and the many celebrations that followed in the month of December. No one

believed that Napoleon’s power had been consolidated by all this. Having

re-established the monarchy and heightened the aristocratic nature of the

regime, he only served to widen still further the gulf between his own cause

and the nation’s. ‘In those days’, said Chaptal, ‘the history of the Revolution

159

france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

was as remote for us as the history of the Greeks and Romans.’ Maybe so for

Chaptal and his like, but among the people its spirit had not been extin-

guished! Napoleon had seduced the French nation with the promise of

peace – he had ﬁ nished by installing himself, while fanning the ﬂ ames of

war. Now there was nothing to restrain him from fulﬁ lling his real desires.

Imperial conquest, despotism and the aristocratic principle would have

their day, while the nation, stunned and troubled, was compelled to follow,

lest it perish, the chariot of Caesar triumphant.

PROJECTS FOR AN INVASION OF ENGLAND.

TRAFALGAR (1805)

The war between France and England dragged on for more than two years

without any decisive result being achieved. Both sides had to endure more

difﬁ culties than they had anticipated. In 1803 England had ﬁ fty-ﬁ ve ships of

the line, as against France’s forty-two, of which only thirteen were ready for

battle. This enormous advantage assured England’s maritime dominance

from the very start. French ports were once again blockaded and their

commerce suppressed, whereas British merchantmen had scarcely anything

to fear except corsairs, against which they were protected now that the use

of escort convoys had been resumed. England wasted no time reoccupying

St Lucia, Tobago and Dutch Guiana. Nevertheless, Addington was accused of

waging the war feebly. Many of the ships were old, and few new ones were

being built because St Vincent was unable to reorganise the timber supply.

Although indirect taxes had been raised, there were still ﬁ nancial difﬁ culties.

The Addington ministry continued to be on chilly terms with Russia ever

since the affair of the Maltese mediation, and its role in the royalist plots of

Year XII had weakened its reputation.

Napoleon pressed for armaments, but he lacked money. In Year XII the

government began again to operate at a deﬁ cit. Conﬁ dent of his power,

Napoleon ﬁ nally heeded the advice of Gaudin, his minister of ﬁ nance, and

restored indirect taxes. ‘Do I not have my gendarmes, my prefects and my

priests?’ he thundered. ‘If anyone should revolt, I will have ﬁ ve or six rebels

hanged, and everyone else will pay.’ On 5 Ventôse, Year XII (25 February

1804), he founded the Excise Bureau (Administration des Droits Réunis)

and appointed Français de Nantes as its director, but only a modest tax on

liquor was imposed. As for the treasury, Barbé-Marbois was unable to keep

its coffers ﬁ lled, and so was forced to seek the assistance of bankers and

contractors. In 1804 Desprez, a director of the Bank of France, and two

ﬁ nanciers, Michel and Séguin, formed the ‘Company of United Merchants’.

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

160

To some extent this company was afﬁ liated with Vanlerberghe’s provisioning

enterprise, but its leading spirit was none other than Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard.

In 1805 it bought up all of the outstanding rescriptions. In April of that year,

Ouvrard offered to advance the government ﬁ fty million francs at nine per

cent on condition that it would count as part of the loan the twenty million

francs that it already owed him and had refused to pay, thus in effect bringing

the interest to ﬁ fteen per cent. In June Ouvrard lent 150 million francs, of

which forty-two million were to count towards the bad debt. In return,

Barbé-Marbois pledged assignments of taxes and treasury obligations.

Desprez saw to it that all of this paper was discounted at the Bank of France,

which thus acquiesced in a disguised inﬂ ation. The allies were made to

contribute. Beginning in April 1803 Flushing and Dutch Brabant were garri-

soned, and Holland, while wishing to remain neutral, had to agree on

25 June to furnish sixteen thousand men and all the ships that might

be required of her. It took an ultimatum to bring Godoy to heel, but on

19 October he promised to contribute six million francs every month; on

19 December the government in Lisbon also agreed to disburse sixteen

million francs. Nevertheless, neither Spain nor Portugal declared war.

Elsewhere the French reoccupied the Neapolitan ports, and in May 1803

Mortier invaded Hanover from Holland, disarmed its army, and then seized

Cuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe and Meppen on the Ems. But all of this

could not sufﬁ ce to make England capitulate; and even if the naval war could

have been waged successfully it would have offered only distant prospects.

Therefore Napoleon decided to threaten the enemy with an invasion.

Napoleon did not discount certain possibilities in Ireland: in 1803 there

had been an insurrection, but it was crushed, and Emmett and Russell were

hanged without France being able to intervene. It was to the project of

1801, however, that he devoted his greatest attention. The army was concen-

trated at the camp of Boulogne; on 2 December 1803 it was named ‘The

Army of England’. By thus massing his forces, Napoleon was able to separate

the army from the nation and gain its personal loyalty through the promise

of a grand enterprise. He was also keeping open the possibility of eventually

swooping down on the Continent and striking a major blow. In January

1805 he maintained that this in fact was the army’s only purpose, while in

reality he was trying to conceal an obstacle which was all too apparent – the

inescapable fact of seapower. There is no doubt that Napoleon on many

occasions had been determined to cross the Channel – quite understandably

* Being an association of purveyors and speculators, the company undertook, inter alia , to

advance money to the French treasury and to supply the army with provisions.

TRANSLATOR .

161

france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

in view of the military situation in the United Kingdom. Early in 1804 the

English army numbered less than one hundred thousand regulars. The

militia numbered seventy-two thousand men, on paper, and volunteers

again were pouring in to escape the draft, perhaps more than three hundred

thousand. On 27 July 1803 Parliament voted a mass levy compelling all men

between the ages of seventeen and ﬁ fty-ﬁ ve to drill; ﬁ nally, on 6 July it was

decided to create an ‘additional force’, recruited by lot. But all of these forces

were worthless: it seems that the government, in case of a landing, planned

to retire into the Welsh countryside to conduct guerrilla warfare. There can

be no question that the French could have occupied London without ﬁ ring

a shot. This alone was enough to tempt Napoleon.

The English were well attuned to the danger. The nation became caught up

in a movement more vibrant even than that of 1797, and about which

Wordsworth left posterity a stirring account. In February 1804 Pitt set out to

attack the ministry; the majority crumbled, and by the end of April Addington

resigned. Pitt wanted a coalition government, but the king refused to accept

Fox, whereupon Grenville, who had reconciled his differences with Fox,

declined to take part in the new ministry. Pitt was thus forced to form his

cabinet with Addington’s colleagues, and he even had to bring in Addington

himself in 1805. Pitt never recaptured the strong parliamentary position he

had formerly enjoyed. He was further weakened by an inquiry into the

Admiralty, which compromised certain speculators, including his intimate

Dundas, now Lord Melville, and which forced the latter to resign. But Pitt

nonetheless brought a ﬁ rmness to English policy which it had previously

lacked. He wove a new coalition in such a way that Russia, driven into the

arms of England by Napoleon’s policies, herself ended by proposing it. At the

same time he organised the volunteers, putting them at last under state

control, and he united the militia and the ‘additional force’ into a kind of

reserve, from which ten thousand men were allocated as reinforcements to

the regular army. In order to secure the co-operation of naval purveyors, he

allowed them a free hand in provisioning the ﬂ eet, which was gradually

brought to 115 ships of the line. He also took pains to assure that the coasts

were defended, and he placed ﬁ nances on a sound basis by restoring the

income tax. His most felicitous act was the appointment of Sir Charles

Middleton, Lord Barham, to succeed Dundas as First Lord of the Admiralty

in April 1805. It was Middleton’s masterly command of the naval operations

of the squadrons that culminated in the Battle of Trafalgar. Until this victory,

English public opinion was in no way conﬁ dent, but Pitt and Barham never

lost their sang-froid. Now it was of little moment that Napoleon had an

army: the great obstacle remained the crossing of the Channel.

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

162

On the one hand, Napoleon was evidently always willing to leave much

to chance: had he not made it to Egypt and back, despite the English squad-

rons? On the other hand, he was so thoroughly Mediterranean that he failed

to consider, initially, the problems posed by the Straits of Dover: the surging

tides, turbulent currents and treacherous winds. At ﬁ rst he had planned to

clear the way by means of gunboats and ﬂ at boats, similar to the barges of

the Flemish canals, which would be loaded with cannon and propelled by

oars. The army was to be transported on merchant vessels; but the fact had

to be faced that these were not in adequate supply, and in September 1803

it was decided that the troops would also be embarked on ﬂ at boats.

Napoleon had them constructed everywhere along the length of the

Channel, but the English squadrons never allowed them to be concentrated

in one place. Nevertheless, in 1804 more than seventeen hundred ﬂ at boats

were gathered at Boulogne and neighbouring ports, and facilities were

constructed to enable them to load equipment. Decrès, the minister of

marine, and Admiral Bruix, the chief of the ﬂ otilla, observed that no more

than a hundred ships could leave Boulogne harbour in a single tide: they

would have been at the mercy of the enemy squadrons. While a tempest or

winds might prevent the enemy from intercepting them, these ﬂ at boats

could not be risked at sea except in fair weather. And so Napoleon was

brought to the necessity of scouring the Channel with his warships; in

short, he was forced to return to a war of naval engagement.

Here Napoleon’s inferiority was all too obvious. The English possessed

not only a superiority of numbers, but boasted a great many more three-

deckers, which towered over the classical seventy-four-gun ship and carried

carronades on the spar deck which enhanced their ﬁ repower even more.

Sir Home Popham had introduced a new and effective system of signalling.

English ships were in better condition, their crews more battle-hardened,

and their admirals, like Nelson, were selected from the ranks of ﬁ ghting

captains. French sailors and warships, shut up in their ports, could not be of

the same quality. Nor could their admirals, who proved themselves capable

only when commanding their own units. Notwithstanding this superiority,

the English squadrons, divided as they were, risked being destroyed piece-

meal. Brest was the only port they guarded closely; Rochefort, being situ-

ated on the Bay of Biscay, was hard to contain; and Toulon was under the

distant vigil of Nelson. The French, then, were not being prevented from

sailing. Had they done so, the British Admiralty had planned to rally the ﬂ eet

at Ushant; as long as the British blocked the entrance to the Channel, they

had nothing to fear. Still, the possibility of surprise could not be entirely

discounted, however improbable the idea might have seemed to some.

163

france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

In May 1804 Napoleon decided that his squadrons, running the blockade,

would rescue Ganteaume at Brest and then sweep the Channel. He arrived at

Boulogne in August, where on the sixteenth he distributed medals of the

Legion of Honour. The preparations, however, turned out to be insufﬁ cient.

First Bruix, and then Latouche-Tréville died. From September 1804 to

March 1805 Austria seemed to be poised for an attack, as a result of

Napoleon’s involvement in Italy, and the project for an invasion of England

appeared to be scrapped. Napoleon ordered his squadrons to sail for the

West Indies, where they were to attack the English colonies. But only Admiral

Missiessy at Rochefort was able to effect a successful sortie (11 January

1805); his expedition to the West Indies proved uneventful, and failing to

meet the other French squadrons, he returned to France.

To all appearances, the danger of war on the Continent had now abated:

it was not until 15 July 1805 that Napoleon realised the real intentions of

the Coalition. Meanwhile, England, after having threatened Spain for a long

time, seized several of her treasure galleons on 5 October 1804. In December

Spain ﬁ nally declared war on England, and Godoy placed his ﬂ eet at the

disposal of the French emperor. Since his position at home was being

menaced by the princess of Asturias, Godoy sent his agent, Izquierdo, to

propose to Napoleon a partition of Portugal, all in the hopes of carving out

a kingdom for himself. Thus encouraged, Napoleon returned to his grand

design. The colonial expedition to the West Indies was now made part of a

greater strategy: the various French squadrons were to effect a junction in

the Antilles, and then, having sown confusion among the enemy, were to

return to the Channel and if necessary give battle. In theory this plan may

have been ingenious, but it presupposed a matériel and a leadership which

simply did not exist. Moreover, Napoleon himself did not provide a

consistent plan: having ﬁ nally resolved on combat, he now forbade

Ganteaume to break the blockade, thus reducing the latter to inactivity

and throwing the whole crushing responsibility on the unenterprising

commander of the ﬂ eet at Toulon, Admiral Villeneuve.

Sailing on 30 March 1805 with eleven ships (to which the Spaniards

added six at Cadiz), Villeneuve ﬁ rst neglected to destroy Admiral Orde’s

force, which guarded the Straits of Gibraltar. He then set out for Martinique,

which he reached only on 14 May. Meanwhile, the English squadrons rallied

at Ushant, with the exception of Nelson, who disobeyed orders. Until

15 April Nelson scoured the Mediterranean looking for Villeneuve, who he

believed was on his way to Egypt; receiving information at last, he hastened

to Gibraltar, where he learned that Villeneuve had sailed west. On 11 May he

left for the Antilles under full sail. It was a huge gamble, for the enemy could