The War of Wars (62 page)

Within barely more than a year Napoleon’s dreams of an empire in the West Indies had been completely dashed; the same had now happened in India; he had been deterred from reinvading Egypt; and he faced encirclement by the great powers of Europe. Pitt’s waning but tough statecraft seemed more than a match for Napoleon’s military skills. Yet, entirely undaunted, the new Emperor proceeded with his intention of destroying his most dangerous foe.

In January 1805 the French at last got their break. Admiral Missiessy, with four ships of the line and 3,500 troops, escaped from Rochefort in a snowstorm, evading the blockading fleet, which was sheltering in Quiberon Bay; and a week later Villeneuve escaped with nine ships of the line from Toulon while Nelson was loading supplies in Maddalena Bay in Sardinia. Nelson immediately sailed to Cagliari and to Palermo to defend these ports. He then proceeded all the way to Alexandria and found nothing. To Napoleon’s fury, the cautious Villeneuve had returned to Toulon in a storm. However, Missiessy’s fleet and army was soon wreaking havoc in the West Indies.

Now Napoleon unveiled his grand design for landing in Ireland and stirring up a rebellion there, attacking the West Indies and staging his invasion from across the Channel. He ordered Ganteaume to sea on 26 March to carry out the first stage. The French admiral’s twenty-one ships found their way blocked by fifteen British ships. He asked for permission to engage. Napoleon refused; so he remained bottled up.

Villeneuve, spurred on by the wrath of the Emperor, slipped out of Toulon again at dead of night on 30 March. There now began the
greatest naval chase in history. Villeneuve’s objective was to fulfil his assigned role in Napoleon’s latest plan, which at least had the merit of simplicity. Villeneuve’s fleet was to rendezvous with that of Ganteaume at Martinique as well as the troops in the West Indies. The aim was to lure the British fleets after them; the joint French fleet would then return across the Atlantic, pick up more French ships and at last defeat what remained of the British fleet in the Channel so that the French invasion force could cross.

Villeneuve did not yet know that Ganteaume’s fleet had been blockaded. Villeneuve steered south, believing Nelson’s fleet to be off Barcelona. In fact Nelson had deliberately appeared off the great Spanish port to lull Villeneuve into a sense of false security and then sailed eastwards to the Gulf of Rhodes, still believing that Napoleon’s navy might be headed towards Egypt. But Villeneuve learnt of Nelson’s eccentric course from a merchantman and steered north of the Balearics, for concealment, and then escaped south and west through the Straits of Gibraltar.

Nelson cruised anxiously back to Sicily, unsure of the enemy’s intentions. Reaching Cartagena, Villeneuve signalled to the single French and fifteen Spanish battleships there to join him. Vice-Admiral Sir John Orde, who was supposed to be blockading Cadiz, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew his five battleships. The French ship and six Spanish battleships joined Villeneuve, who disappeared over the western horizon.

There was considerable shock in England that Villeneuve had escaped: on the London Stock Exchange consoles fell to 57. The French ‘can get out when they choose’ declared a fashionable lady. Nelson was blamed. The British admiral, having gone in entirely the wrong direction, now had to battle against unfavourable winds across to the western Mediterranean. His progress was slow, averaging ninety miles a day in the end.

Napoleon was delighted by news of Villeneuve’s escape. Never convinced by Nelson’s reputation, he had watched the British commander repulsed off Boulogne in 1801 and now outwitted by Villeneuve. The Emperor instructed Ganteaume to stay where he was while Villeneuve was to arch round the north coast of Scotland and then
convoy the invasion fleet from the Texel, as in the original plan. He was then to overwhelm the British blockading fleets at Ferrol and Brest and with an impregnable armada of sixty battleships guarantee the safe crossing of the invasion transport.

The new First Lord was Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, now Lord Barham, the genius who as Controller of the Navy had revived the senior service after the American war. Now seventy-eight, but still in full possession of his faculties, he had ordered Sir Alexander Cochrane to reinforce the five British warships in the West Indies with his own. He ordered a flying squadron of seven more warships under Collingwood to reinforce Cochrane.

Pitt meanwhile had assembled a ‘secret expedition’ of several thousand soldiers under Sir Eyre Coote, a British Indian veteran, and Sir James Cruz to sail for the Mediterranean where they were to liaise with a Russian force from Corfu. Pitt feared that Villeneuve had sailed to intercept it and Nelson, who was supposed to be protecting the Mediterranean, had disappeared. Barham ordered Collingwood to go to the rescue of the secret expedition, stripping the western approaches of the Channel of ships so as to bring his force up to eighteen warships.

To the astonishment of both Barham and Napoleon, Missiessy suddenly turned up with his four battleships off Rochefort. The reports had been false: he had not fled to Dominica or Tobago but had returned across the Atlantic. Meanwhile Nelson, who had at last reached Gibraltar, learnt of the secret expedition which had then arrived at the mouth of the Tagus in Portugal and had occupied the forts there in anticipation of the arrived of Villeneuve’s fleet. The expedition’s commanders in turn learnt that Nelson was nearby, and they sailed in delight to meet him. There, escorted by two battleships, they made their way eastwards towards Gibraltar. Pitt’s expedition was safe.

After this wholly unnecessary diversion, Nelson decided to leave in pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies. He remarked: ‘I was in a thousand fears for Jamaica, that is a blow which Buonaparte would be happy to give us. I flew to the West Indies without any orders, but I think the ministry cannot be displeased . . . I was bred, as you know, in
the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions.’ This was very nearly a colossal misjudgement.

He had left twenty of his twenty-three cruisers behind in the Mediterranean; so he now had ten ships of the line and three frigates to pursue a fleet twice as large. Soon after he departed, Collingwood arrived to escort the secret expedition; he despatched two further battleships across the Atlantic to reinforce Nelson.

News arrived that Villeneuve had reached Martinique on 16 May. Barham immediately feared that when Nelson arrived in the West Indies, Villeneuve would sail straight back to Europe where the Straits of Dover had been stripped of most of their defences. Cornwallis, blocking Brest, was ordered to send ten of his battleships to reinforce Collingwood’s small Channel flotilla. The remainder of the scrappy Channel fleets – Cornwall’s twelve ships, the five still off Rochefort and several more in British ports – were to join together if Villeneuve suddenly materialized in British waters.

Nelson’s fleet crossed the 3,200 miles from Gibraltar to Barbados in just three weeks – an average of 135 miles a day, an extraordinary feat, as his slowest ship, the
Superb
, was barely seaworthy. Nelson could not be certain of finding Villeneuve, and was ready to sail back immediately if he did not. On 4 June the British fleet reached Barbados where they learned that the French had indeed arrived, and had left. Nelson was exultant, believing he had caught his man. He made the signal, ‘Prepare for battle’.

On the advice of General Brereton he sailed for Trinidad in pursuit, where he found no sign of the Franco-Spanish fleet. Nelson was furious: ‘But for General Brereton’s d—d information Nelson would have been, living or dead, the greatest man in his profession England ever saw. Now, alas! I am nothing . . .’

Nelson immediately made for Grenada to the north. There he learnt that Villeneuve had been sighted at Martinique on the 5th – the two fleets had passed within a hundred miles of each other. The unsuspecting Villeneuve, who had lost 3,000 of his men through sickness, had orders to remain in the West Indies until joined by Ganteaume and to capture as many British islands as possible. He had sailed to Guadeloupe to pick up troops, and to his shock had learned that Nelson had been
anchored off Barbados just days before. In spite of his overwhelming naval superiority, that was enough for Villeneuve: he set sail immediately back across the Atlantic to Ferrol.

Nelson had succeeded in his first object without a fight. The West Indies had been saved for Britain. When Nelson reached Antigua, he discovered that he was four days behind Villeneuve, but he had no idea where the French fleet had gone. He had a difficult decision to make: had Villeneuve set off to attack Jamaica, or had he sailed for Europe? He was relieved at last to hear from a young captain that Villeneuve’s thirty-two-ship fleet had been sighted making for the north-east. On 13 June Nelson set sail for Gibraltar.

Villeneuve arched back across the Atlantic to the north. He had the choice of liaising with the Rochefort or Ferrol Squadrons and assembling a mighty fleet in the Channel of more than forty ships of the line to crush the few British ships still there. Nelson sent the
Curieux
, his fastest ship, on ahead to warn Barham of Villeneuve’s return, and this overtook the French fleet to arrive at Plymouth on 7 July.

Hearing the news, Barham acted with a speed that belied his age and ordered ten ships from the Channel Fleet and five from the Rochefort blockade to stand in Villeneuve’s path. The unimaginative Sir Robin Calder was put in charge. On 22 July, after a delay of three days, Calder’s squadron was cruising off Ferrol in thick fog as Villeneuve’s twenty ships of the line arrived, neither fleet seeing the other. At noon the fog lifted. Calder was daunted by the size of the enemy fleet, but after five hours of hesitation he ordered his ships to engage as fog descended again. The fighting was inconclusive and confused, lasting several hours before two Spanish ships surrendered.

The following day dawned with the two fleets having drifted seventeen miles apart, again separated by fog. Neither of these cautious commanders chose to attack. It was a deeply unimpressive dress rehearsal for a much larger battle. Nelson would have shown no such hesitation. On 20 July Villeneuve reached the safety of Ferrol, which Calder had been seeking to blockade. Calder withdrew to join Cornwallis’s blockading squadron at Brest.

There Nelson had already arrived, left his ships and sailed back to England for long-deserved leave – for the first time in more than two
years. He was bitterly disappointed and neurotically ill again. The great chase had failed. The French fleet had escaped. He had travelled nearly 7,000 miles in vain. The histrionic, highly-strung seeker after glory was plunged into despair.

Yet he need not have felt such disappointment. The West Indies were safe and he and Barham had between them frustrated Napoleon’s latest attempt at an invasion. Nelson’s pursuit of Villeneuve back to Europe at such speed – Napoleon believed Nelson’s fleet would tarry behind in the West Indies – and Barham ordering the interception of Villeneuve’s fleet had prevented the junction of the French fleets that would have secured mastery of the Channel before Nelson’s return.

Napoleon for once explained his objective in simple terms two months later:

My plan [had been] to concentrate 40 or 50 battleships at Martinique by movements concerted from Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, and Brest; then have them return suddenly to Boulogne; get control of the straits for fifteen days; have 150,000 men and 10,000 horses ready; disembark in England, seize London and the Thames. This plan almost succeeded. Had Admiral Villeneuve, instead of going into Ferrol, merely effected his junction with the Spanish squadron, and made sail for Brest to join Admiral Ganteaume, my army was over, and there was an end to England. To carry out this plan, it was necessary to collect 150,000 men at Boulogne, a flotilla of 4,000 boats, and immense stores; get all this on board ship, and yet prevent the enemy from guessing my intentions: this seemed impossible.

If I was to succeed it was by doing the reverse of what seemed obvious. If 50 ships of the line were going to cover the passage of the army to England, all that we needed at Boulogne were transports; and the immense display of gunboats and floating batteries of various kinds was absolutely useless. Collecting 4,000 vessels of this sort was opposing cannon to cannon, ship of war to ship of war; and the enemy were taken in. They believed I intended to force the passage by means of the flotilla, and never realized my actual plan. When, after my fleet had failed to carry out its manoeuvre, they perceived the
danger they had run, fear seized on the cabinet of London, and every thinking man admitted that England had never been so near disaster.

He was beside himself with rage when Villeneuve sought the safety of Ferrol.

I believe that Villeneuve hasn’t enough in him to command a frigate. He has no decision and no moral courage. Two Spanish ships have been in collision, a few men are sick on his own ships, add to that two days of unfavourable winds, an enemy’s ship reconnoitring, a report that Nelson has joined Calder: and his plans are changed, when, taking these facts one by one, they amount to nothing. He has not the experience of war, nor the instinct for it.

The French had missed their chance for good. In fact the invasion of England had been averted by the West Indies chase. Napoleon had abandoned it in principle long before the Battle of Trafalgar was fought more than three months later. By then, the Emperor, waiting and watching from the cliffs above Boulogne, was already beginning to worry about news of the great armies assembling in the east. For that he had his own actions entirely to blame. As Seeley wrote:

At the very same time, when his grand stroke against England was in suspense, Napoleon extended his power so recklessly in Italy, behaved with such insolence to the German Powers, and shocked public feeling by acts so Jacobinical, that he brought upon himself a new European coalition. It was the great mistake of his life. He was not, in the long run, a match for England and the Continent together; and he made, at starting, the irremediable mistake of not dividing these two enemies. He seems, indeed, to have set out with a monstrous miscalculation, which might have ruined him very speedily, for he had his plans for an invasion of England and a war in Europe at the same time.