The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-14 00:00:00

their number. Nelson, with but eleven sail, was full ef con-
fidence, on those seas on which Villeneuve trembled with
twenty sail, and those manned by heroic sailors !"

On-his return, Villeneuve luckily escaped Nelson, but
to his great terror fell in with Calder, and was forced to
fight. Thiers seems to claim the victory. " Thus,"
says he, " ended.the battle, which might have been taken
for a victory on our side, but for the loss of the two
Spanish ships." These two ships, he avers, were not
fairly taken—they simply drifted into the English line,
and Admiral Calder hurried off with his prizes in the
greatest consternation, lest the gallant Villeneuve should
again come up with him, and it was by accident only
that the cowardly English were not annihilated. "At
day-break," says Thiers, " the situation of the two
squadrons was clearly discernible. The English were
retreating, but carrying off the two Spanish vessels:"—
" Grief and exasperation became general on board our
vessels. The crews asked to renew the action, and fight a de-
cisive battle. The wind was in our favour, as on the previous
evening, blowing from us towards the English. If at this in-
stant Villeneuve had given the signal to bear down upon the
enemy, without any other order of battle than the order of
speed in sailing, fourteen of the eighteen vessels we still
possessed, being of an equal rate of speed, would have fallen
upon the English at once ; the other four would have arrived
soon afterwards, and the battle would certainly have been in
our favour. Roused by the cry which arose among all the
officers, Villeneuve at length gave orders for that move-
ment, and went with Lauriston on board the frigate
l'Hortense, to give his orders verbally to each chief of
division. The Argonaut, the Spanish admiral's ship, having
sprung her mizen-top-yard, required time to fish it. Ville-
neuve would wait for her, which took till near noon. Then
he commenced the chase; but the wind had slackened, and
he saw the English steal away from him without his being
able to gain much upon them even under a press of canvass."
Villeneuve at last, to his great joy, got a sight of
land, and ran into Vigo, and afterwards entered the
roadstead between Ferrol and Corunna. There he re-
ceived pressing orders from Napoleon "to hasten to
Brest, and give battle to Cornwallis, at the risk even of
annihilation :"

" But (adds the author) there was a sort of fatality attached
to this unfortunate seaman, to disturb his spirit, and to lead
him from pang to pang to the result which he fain would
have shunned, that is to say, to losing a great battle, and
losing it without obtaining the only result that Napoleon
demanded of him, that of being four-and-twenty hours in
the Channel."

All this obloquy cast on poor Villeneuve is to lessen
the disgrace of Trafalgar. But Villeneuve would not,
or could not, come to Brest, notwithstanding the follow-
ing pressing order from the Emperor:—
" I hope, Vice-Admiral Villeneuve, that you arrived at
Brest. Set out, lose not a moment, bring my united
squadrons into the Channel, and England is ours! We are
all ready, everything is embarked. Be here but for twenty-
four hours, and all is ended.' (Imperial Camp of Boulogne.
22d of August. )"
He bad taken shelter in the bay of Cadiz, in the very
opposite direction, for the best reason in the world.
His whole fleet would have been annihilated by the
vast force the Englishihad ready to meet him. Napoleon
then "called Villeneuve a coward, and even a traitor, and
directed orders to be instantly drawn up for bringing him
by force from Cadiz into the Channel if he were gone to
Cadiz." Decres, however, contrived to frustrate the order,
as he considered the assemblage` of the English fleets
between Ferrol, Brest, and Portsmouth to be "horribly
dangerous." Then his wild rage fell upon Decres, and
though Decres knew perfectly well, and Napoleon also,
that Villeneuve had gone into Cadiz, still the farce was
kept up. Napoleon was " incessantly upon the sea-shore,
looking for some sudden arrival upon the horizon. Naval
officers, stationed with their glasses upon the various
points of the coast, were employed to observe all that
was visible upon the sea, and to report to him."
At last Decree persuaded him that the fleets
had sailed for Cadiz. Then follows a scene
which we will leave M. Thiers to describe.
It represents Bonaparte in the very worst light—a
tyrant, and even a tyrant to his intimate friends; a hypo-
critical deceiver, who knew that his admirals could not
accomplish impossibilities ; who covered his own defeat
at Boulogne by heaping upon them disgrace ; who made
their treachery and their cowardice, as he was pleased
to call their judicious and only safe measures, pretences
for breaking up the camp, and marching with his whole
army against Germany—schemes which he had already
prepared, and which he would have carried into effect
had even all his fleets ventured to obey his orders. But
we doubt if any such orders ever were given. Never
was a scene for effect better got up in France, but France
only, than the following :
" It was with deep grief, mingled with violent bursts of
anger, that Napoleon at length gave up all hope of seeing his
fleet arrive in the Straits. Such was his irritation, that a
man for whom he entertained no ordinary friendship, the
learned Monge, who almost every morning made a very
military breakfast with him in the imperial hut on the sea-
shore, Monge, on seeing him in that disposition, discreetly re-
tired, judging. that his presence would be troublesome. He
went to M. Daru, then principal secretary at war, and told
him what he had seen. At the same instant M. Darn him-
self was called, and had to repair to the Emperor. He found
him agitated, talking to himself, and not seeming to perceive
the persons around him. Scarcely had M. Daru arrived, and
still stood silent and waiting for orders, when Napoleon went
up to him, and addressing him as if he had been acquainted
with everything, said, Do you know where Villeneuve is ?
He is at Cadiz Then he launched out into long and fierce
invectives against the weakness and incapacity of all who
surrounded him, said that he was betrayed by the cowardice
of mankind, deplored the ruin of the most splendid, the most
secure of all the plans he had ever conceived in his life, and
displayed in all its bitterness the grief of genius abandoned
by fortune. Suddenly mastering his agitation, he all at once
calmed himself, and with a surprising facility recalling his
mind from those closed ways of the ocean to the open roads
of the Continent, he dictated, for several hours in succession,
with an extraordinary precision and presence of mind, the
plan which will be given in the following book. It was the
plan of the immortal campaign of 1805. There was no
longer the slightest trace of irritation either in his voice or
in his countenance."