Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  Wilberforce came down against Melville. Pitt slumped back in despair. Wilberforce was his friend, but he was voting against Pitt’s wishes. So would many others, following Wilberforce’s lead.

  The vote was taken shortly afterwards. Two hundred and sixteen Members of Parliament voted in favour of censuring Lord Melville. Two hundred and sixteen voted against. The result was a tie.

  All eyes turned to Speaker Charles Abbot, who paled at the responsibility. After a pause of several minutes, during which Abbot looked as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt, he took a deep breath and gave his casting vote in favour of the motion. Melville was to be formally censured by the House.

  The opposition exploded. Baying in triumph, they crowded round and yelled at Pitt to resign. Unable to stop a flow of tears, he hid his face behind his hat. Some of his supporters ran to help, shielding him from the opposition as they escorted him from the chamber. They got him out of the House and calmed him down, but the damage had been done. Melville resigned next day and Britain was without a First Lord of the Admiralty at a time when the country needed a First Lord more than ever before. The feeling in the Commons was that it wouldn’t be much longer before the rest of the government fell as well.

  The news took several weeks to reach the ships at sea – Nelson did not learn about it until early May. ‘I have just heard that Lord Melville has left the Admiralty . . . His Lordship was doing much for the Service, and now we have to look forward to someone else.’ From the sailors’ point of view, it was not a good time for a change of leadership.

  Nelson had been in a state of deep anxiety all month, ever since Villeneuve’s escape from Toulon. His ships had been all over the Mediterranean looking for him, but without success. He had finally learned of Villeneuve’s whereabouts on 18 April, when word reached him that the French had slipped past Gibraltar nine days earlier. Even then, though, he had not been able to set off in pursuit immediately. The wind had turned against him, blowing strongly from the west, just where he needed to go. It continued for several days, adding to his frustration. Nelson was in despair by the time it veered at last and he was able to get his fleet through the Straits on 6 May and out into the Atlantic. But he still had no idea which way to go to follow Villeneuve. North, towards England and Ireland? Or west, across the Atlantic?

  It was an acute dilemma for Nelson. If he went north while Villeneuve went to the West Indies, he would be pilloried at home for allowing the French to ravage Britain’s colonies. But if he headed for the West Indies, leaving Villeneuve free to join the Boulogne invasion, he would be castigated even more. ‘If I fail, if they are not gone to the West Indies, I shall be blamed; to be burnt in effigy or Westminster Abbey is my alternative.’

  Nelson couldn’t decide between the two. He personally thought the French had sailed north:

  The circumstances of their having taken the Spanish Ships which were for sea, from Cadiz, satisfies my mind that they are not bound to the West Indies (nor probably the Brazils), but intend forming a junction at Ferrol, and pushing direct for Ireland or Brest.

  That was Nelson’s opinion, but it was only an opinion. He didn’t know for sure.

  Desperate for more information, he had sent ships ahead to see what they could learn. On 9 May, he received a note from the Orpheus saying that an American sea captain had been in Cadiz on the day Villeneuve sailed. According to the captain, Villeneuve had departed on 9 April amid scenes of chaos. Several Spanish ships had followed unwillingly, their crews ‘forced with great reluctance aboard the men-of-war’. Both the French and Spanish ships had been carrying troops, some of them cavalry. The word in Cadiz was that they were bound either for Ireland or the West Indies, but the captain couldn’t say which.

  Nor could anyone else. No one knew where they had gone. A Portuguese man-of-war had seen them sailing west, but they might easily have changed course over the horizon to confuse the pursuit. On the other hand, Nelson had received no word from the north that they had gone that way. Surely a frigate would have been sent to tell him if the French had been seen heading for the Channel? Or was one on its way to him even now?

  Exactly a month after Villeneuve’s disappearance, Nelson anchored his fleet in Lagos Bay, off Portugal’s southern tip. Sick with worry – ‘disappointment has worn me to a skeleton’ – he sat pondering his options while the fleet took on provisions to last five months. Where was Villeneuve now? Standing off Walmer or some Irish beach while the Grand Army swarmed ashore in an orgy of rape and destruction? Rampaging through the West Indies, annexing island after island for France with no one to stop him? The possibilities were too awful to contemplate.

  Alone in his cabin, Nelson came to his decision. The decision was his to make and no one else’s. He had nobody to help him, no real information to go on. All he had was thousands of men who would go wherever he told them, without demur. But the call was his to make. Nelson had got it horribly wrong when he thought Villeneuve was bound for Egypt or Sicily. The country would have his head if he got it wrong again.

  He made up his mind on the morning of 11 May: they would go to the West Indies. God help them all if he hadn’t got it right this time.

  CHAPTER 17

  VILLENEUVE IN THE

  WEST INDIES

  Three days later, Villeneuve arrived in Martinique after a panic-stricken voyage across the Atlantic. He had spent much of it looking over his shoulder, terrified that Nelson was about to appear at any moment. Villeneuve had seen what Nelson had done at the Nile, sailing inshore of the French in the darkness and catching them disastrously off-guard. The battle had left a huge impression on him. He didn’t want anything like it to happen again.

  But there had been no sign of the Royal Navy coming after him, or anyone else either. Villeneuve was on his own. Once safely at sea, he had taken the opportunity to shake his crews down, working on their seagoing skills during the five-week voyage. Most had never been out of sight of land before, but were soon cured of that. Villeneuve pushed them hard, preparing them for the battle that undoubtedly lay ahead.

  It was also a chance to fire his guns, now that they were on the open sea. It was important for his men to know what a real broadside felt like, and he hadn’t been able to show them in harbour. Even at sea he couldn’t fire more than once or twice because of the need to conserve ammunition, but at least his men could feel the shudder as the guns recoiled and see the fall of shot on the wave tops. It wouldn’t come as a total surprise when they had to do it for real.

  They reached Martinique on 14 May to discover that Admiral Missiessy’s fleet had long since returned to Europe. After attacking a few British islands, Missiessy had given up waiting for Villeneuve and set off for home at the end of March. He was probably back in Rochefort by now. Villeneuve was still on his own.

  Two days later, however, he was joined by the remainder of the Spanish squadron, which had been trailing after him all the way from Cadiz. The Spanish contingent was now six ships of the line and one frigate. The Spaniards spoke a different language from the French and employed different tactics. The two navies did not even have a signal book in common. But Admiral Gravina was a good officer with a long career behind him. In 1793, he had cooperated with the Royal Navy in supporting royalist Toulon against the excesses of the French Revolution. Times had changed since then. He was with the French now.

  Their orders were to wait at Martinique until joined by Admiral Ganteaume’s fleet from Brest. They did not yet know that Ganteaume had never left harbour. With time on his hands, Villeneuve turned his attention to HMS Diamond Rock, an outcrop off the tip of Martinique, 600 feet high, which had been occupied by the Royal Navy for the past sixteen months. The British had fired on the Spanish ships as they came into harbour. It was time the rock was recaptured for France.

  Villeneuve assigned a sizeable task force to the operation – two ships of the line, three other ships and eleven gunboats, together with several hundred assault troops. They approached the rock on 31 May and b
egan a bombardment at 8 a.m. The British promptly abandoned the lower reaches and retreated towards the summit, taking their ladders with them. The French troops landed quickly enough, but took another two days to scale the rock face. The Royal Navy’s ammunition was almost exhausted by then, and an earth tremor had cracked the garrison’s cistern. Further resistance was impossible without drinking water, so the Diamond Rock’s commander hoisted the white flag and negotiated an honourable surrender. The British had lost two men killed and one wounded in the action. The French acknowledged at least fifty casualties, although the British reckoned it was more.

  While this small triumph was taking place, Villeneuve had received fresh orders from Napoleon. Ganteaume was still stuck in Brest, but Rear-Admiral Charles de Magon was coming instead, bringing extra troops to help Villeneuve continue his attacks on British colonies. There would be enough troops, Napoleon calculated, for Villeneuve to expel the British from all the Leeward Islands and probably Trinidad as well.

  Villeneuve was shaken. This was the first he had heard of clearing the British out of the islands. His previous orders had simply told him to wait at Martinique until Ganteaume arrived. There had been nothing about attacking the British. Yet here was Napoleon thinking he had been clearing British colonies all this time. Had he missed a set of orders somewhere? Or had Napoleon simply forgotten what his original plan had been?

  Admiral Magon arrived on 4 June but could shed no light on the matter. Anxious to make up for lost time, Villeneuve decided to attack the British at once. Combining forces with Magon, he sailed north on 5 June and arrived off Antigua next day. Jane Kerby, daughter of a judge on the island, reported their arrival to a friend:

  You will have heard how the combined fleet escaped by magic; how in reality (for I counted them myself – twenty-four of the line) they rode triumphant on our element for some weeks . . . how they peeped into the beautiful harbour of St John’s, missed the rich sugar-loaded ships . . . tried to look warlike and form a line of battle, but they could not; but how, alas! they scampered after our sugar, took fourteen ships full of that and various good things going to our friends; and how to our great joy they burnt this treasure on its way to some of these islands by the manoeuvres of a sloop of war, who, afraid of being taken, threw out signals as for approaching friends, and they, toujours Nelson en tête, saw his ghost, and destroyed their prizes in the most premature and shameful hurry.

  That was about the size of it. A British convoy of merchant ships laden with sugar, rum and coffee had been in St John’s harbour, waiting to join forces with convoys from the other islands before heading back to England. They had panicked at the sight of Villeneuve’s fleet sailing past the harbour. Believing he was about to land 10,000 troops, they had sailed at once, without waiting for a proper escort. The schooner Netley was their only protection as they put to sea, but instead of escaping Villeneuve’s fleet they sailed right into it. The merchant ships scattered, but by nightfall on 7 June their heavily laden craft had all been captured. Only the Netley escaped.

  Yet Villeneuve’s triumph was short-lived. Interrogation of his prisoners revealed the unwelcome information that Nelson and the Mediterranean fleet had arrived at Barbados on 4 June. The Netley was on her way to him now, to give him Villeneuve’s position.

  Villeneuve held a hasty council of war with Admiral Gravina. Clearing the British from the islands was out of the question now. His orders were to avoid battle with Nelson, in order to preserve his fleet for the invasion of England. He was supposed to remain in the West Indies until a set date, in case Ganteaume arrived from Brest, but the climate was unhealthy and yellow fever rife. If he waited, Nelson might find him and destroy his fleet. Villeneuve was for sailing back to Europe at once.

  So was Gravina. His ships were in such a mess that they should never have left Cadiz. He backed Villeneuve all the way. To the disgust of many in the fleet, the two admirals decided to return to Europe without delay. Their decision was not well received by their junior officers.

  ‘We have been masters of the sea for three weeks,’ one complained, ‘with a landing force of 7,000 to 8,000 men and have not been able to attack a single island.’ His disillusion was widely shared. Villeneuve was fast losing the confidence of his men. They thought he was running away from a fight.

  But his men hadn’t seen Villeneuve’s secret orders and didn’t know that the invasion of England was their ultimate goal. They saw only an admiral apparently fleeing from Nelson. They didn’t see an admiral luring Nelson to the tropics before doubling back to Europe with his fleet intact, ready for the biggest fight of all.

  Villeneuve himself was no coward. He came from a martial family. A Villeneuve was said to have died with Roland at Roncesvaux in 778. Another had fought alongside England’s Richard I during the Crusades. A third had been a friend of Bayard, the chevalier sans peur from whose helmet Napoleon had distributed the Légions d’honneur at Boulogne. Villeneuve was a good sailor and a skilled tactician. Unfortunately, he was also inordinately cautious and hesitant, particularly where Lord Nelson was concerned. After his experience at the Battle of the Nile, his mind seems to have gone to pieces whenever he thought of Nelson.

  But his decision to return to Europe was sensible enough – that was where the real fight lay. According to Napoleon’s plan, they were to go to Ferrol first, on the north-western tip of Spain. From there they would join forces with Ganteaume’s Brest fleet for the attack on England. They only needed control of the English Channel for a day or two to get the Grand Army ashore and heading for London. Strength of numbers ought to do it, if Nelson was diverted elsewhere. Villeneuve gave the necessary orders on 10 June. The combined fleet sailed at once.

  Nelson wasn’t far behind. After several days’ fruitless search of the islands, he received a definite sighting of the French on 13 June. The schooner Netley had spotted the entire fleet at sea, probably heading back to Europe. Nelson guessed they were aiming for Cadiz or Toulon, but it was a long way to go and they only had three days’ start. He might still catch them if he tried. Nelson set off immediately.

  CHAPTER 18

  PREPARATIONS CONTINUE

  ON THE HOME FRONT

  In Boulogne, meanwhile, the Grand Army had no idea what was happening anywhere else. Nobody had told them anything at all.

  The army had been in Boulogne almost two years now, training constantly for the invasion of England. The men had endured another winter of inaction, huddling together in their huts while General Bonaparte bustled off to Paris to crown himself Emperor. They had been looking forward to the spring, with its promise of invasion, but nothing had happened in the spring and now it was almost summer again. The army could have been forgiven for wondering if it was going to be stuck in Boulogne for ever.

  The soldiers had been there so long they were starting to put down roots. Babies were being born to them, attachments formed. They would lose their fighting edge if they stayed much longer. It was time to move on.

  There were rumblings about Napoleon as well. The army had never been happy with the idea of a general as Emperor. Its men were citizen-soldiers, not subjects. They tolerated Napoleon’s imperial ambition because he was an outstanding commander, but they did not like it. They liked it even less in his family – his sisters jockeying for position, his twenty-year-old brother Jerome styling himself ‘Imperial Highness’ and parading around in a hussar’s uniform to which he was not entitled. And now from Milan had come the news that Napoleon had just appointed his stepson viceroy of Italy, a move that had prompted Marshal Joachim Murat to break his sword across his knee in anger. There seemed no end to the Bonaparte family and their pretensions.

  On the waterfront at Boulogne, an enormous obelisk had been erected to the new Emperor. It proclaimed him the liberator of the seas and declared Boulogne the place from which the avenging thunderbolts would be launched. But there was precious little sign of it so far. The invasion barges were still in harbour, packed tightly side by side. The Royal N
avy still patrolled outside, oppressing everyone with its presence. The regiments of the Grand Army had been issued with their new imperial eagles, which they referred to privately as cuckoos, but they had yet to carry them into battle anywhere. There had been no sign of avenging thunderbolts heading for England. The situation could not continue much longer like that before it began to fall apart.

  Across the water, preparations for receiving the Grand Army continued apace. The fortifications in Kent and Sussex were still not ready, but there were more muskets now, more uniforms, greater organisation. Every day that passed saw the defences growing stronger and the populace better prepared. The Grand Army would not have an easy time of it when it came.

  At Tilbury, just downriver from London, a row of blockships had been anchored across the Thames to defend the approaches to the city. The ships were armed with twenty-four-pounders capable of raking the entire river in a single broadside. Shore batteries on either side protected the approaches by land. New roads had been built from Tilbury to the military encampments at Warley Common in Essex and Coxheath in Kent, so that troops could be moved at short notice wherever they were needed. The men were properly equipped and well experienced at speed-marching. They had been training for it for months.

  In London, too, the volunteer forces were increasingly well trained, becoming more military by the day. There had been a roar of derision when Prime Minister Addington first appeared in uniform at the House of Commons in 1803, but times had changed since then. They were all in uniform now. The Duke of Bedford had long been a private in the volunteers, the Lord Chancellor a corporal. Even Charles James Fox, fattest and least martial MP in the Commons, was a private in the Chertsey Association. The lawyers of the Temple were all volunteers together, drilling regularly in the Temple garden where the sides were said to have been chosen for the Wars of the Roses. The sight of so many lawyers in uniform had so appalled King George at a review in Hyde Park that he had dubbed them the Devil’s Own – retained for the defence.