The campaign of Trafalgar

Front matter

THE CAMPAIGN OF TRAFALGAR

BY THE SAME AUTHOR DRAKE AND THE TUDOR

NAVY : with a History of the Rise of England as a Maritime Power. With Portraits, Illustrations, and Maps. 2 vols. Crown 8vo, 16s.

Preface

In the most recent bibliography of the Waterloo campaign, that prepared by Professor Oman for the Cambridge Modern History, there appear little short of a score of works entirely devoted to its elucidation. For the Trafalgar campaign our English language cannot boast a single one. Of the battle itself there are studies innumerable, serious, fanciful, and anecdotic ; but the fact remains that, though its centenary is past and gone, no British pen has ever been set to the task of producing, from the vast store of material that exists, anything like a reasoned Staff account of the crowning chapter in the history of naval warfare. We have, it is true, Mr. Newbolt's delightful volume, The Year of Trafalgar; but that, although it contains the best study of the battle that has yet appeared, makes no pretence of dealing exhaustively with the policy and operations which led to it. The truth is that for all the spade work that has been devoted to it in recent years by Sir John K. Laughton, Mr. Leyland, and others, the subject has been left, so far as the Service and the public are concerned, in the same comparative darkness that enshrouds the bulk of our naval history. Nelson's share of the work has received ample justice. Indeed the campaign has scarcely ever been approached except from his standpoint. And yet till nearly the end his share was comparatively small. Until in the last month of his life, when he resumed command of the restored Mediterranean station, he had a bare dozen of the line and a score or so of cruisers under his flag, while during the year there were in commission and reserve well over a hundred of the line and four hundred cruisers.

Nor is this all. The military side of the campaign has been left in even greater obscurity than the naval. In the course of the year, besides the troops in the East and West viii PREFACE

Indies, we had something like 50,000 men engaged in active oversea operations. Only a fraction of these touched Nelson, and where they did their deflecting influence on his strategy has been almost entirely ignored. Indeed it is not too much to say that the controlling fact that the campaign of 1805 was a combined campaign and not merely naval, has never been given its due importance. Still less has it been realised that it was essentially an offensive campaign, and not merely a campaign of defence against invasion. The failure to grasp these cardinal facts has clouded even Nelson's action and exposed him to criticism which he did not deserve. How much more then has it clouded the rest !

It is not that a minute study of the campaign detracts in the least from Nelson's greatness. High as such a study lifts the reputation of his colleagues, Nelson still remains the greatest of admirals. The fascination of his dazzling personality still dominates the judgment, and it is only by a severe and persistent effort of resistance that we can hope to see things in their true proportion and real meaning. If we would read the lesson aright not only must we keep Nelson's part in due subordination, but we must also continually forswear the calling of the sea and closet ourselves with Pitt and Melville, with Barham and Castlereagh. It is with them alone we may watch the inward springs at work, by which the fleets at sea were really controlled, and mark the flow of intelligence from spies and cruisers and embassies that set them in motion or stayed their action.

For such a detailed study, as most of our military campaigns but not one of our naval have received, the time has been ripened by the publication of a large proportion of the essential documents. For the diplomatic influences, which in this, as in most campaigns, provides the master-key, we have Mr. Holland Rose's Select Desimtches relating to the Third Coalition against France, 1804—5, edited for the Royal Historical Society, though, as the editor unfortunately omitted to note the dates on which the despatches were received, their connection with naval and military instructions has been impossible to trace without collation with the originals.

PREFACE ix

To this collection must be added, besides the well-known correspondence of Napoleon and Talleyrand, Mons. P. Coquelle's Napoleon et Angleterre (1803-13), and Mons. Charles Auriol's La France, V Angleterre et Naples (1803-6), both invaluable works.

For the naval side we have Mr. Leyland's Bespatclies and Letters relating to the Blochade of Brest, 1803-5, edited for the Navy Records Society, and the Cornvjallis Fapers, recently published by the Historical MSS. Commission from the collection of Mr. Cornwallis Wykeham-Martin {Various Collections, .\o\. \\. 1909). But for the most valuable published material by far we must acknowledge our debt with humility, if not with shame, to the French War Office. The monumental works of Colonel Edouard Desbriere, entitled, Frojets et tentatires de d^barquement av.x lies Britanniques (1793-1805) and La Campiaign Maritime de Trafalgar, published under the direction of the Section Historique de I'Etat-major de I'Armee, contain the first attempt to form a real Staff history of the campaign, and although they make no pretence of dealing adequately with the unpublished English material, they place us for the first time in a position to see the campaign as it really was. My debt to these volumes, increased as it is by Colonel Desbriere's courtesy in personally elucidating points that were obscured by faulty transcripts, is almost beyond recognition. A similar w^ork from the Spanish side is still in progress in the Bevista de Marina by General Galiano, a lineal descendant of a Trafalgar hero. It is useful in supplementing Colonel Desbriere's volumes, although most of the important Spanish documents were generously communicated to the French Staff by General Galiano for Colonel Desbriere's use.

Amongst manuscript sources only recently accessible, we have the Pitt Papers, deposited at the Public Record Office, and, still more valuable, the Barham Papers, which have been entrusted for publication to the Navy Records Society. To these latter I have been permitted access, and have received invaluable assistance in examining them from the editor, Sir John Laugh ton.

The labour of working through the mass of ship's Logs

X PREFACE

and Journals, the Admirals' and Captains' letters, and the other rich material in the Admiralty Archives, and of subsequently reducing it to narrative and critical form, has necessarily been great; but in attempting the formidable task my path has been smoothed by many ready helpers. My thanks are specially due to Captain Hudleston, R.N., for placing at my disposal his researches into the system of naval defence in home waters ; to Mr. Perrin, the Admiralty Librarian, for help in every direction, and particularly in preparing the Schedule of Signals recorded as having been made at the battle of Trafalgar ; and to Lieutenant Keate, R.N., for assistance in preparing the track charts from the Logs.

Of these charts, which have now been constructed for the first time, and which are the necessary basis of all strategical criticism, it must be explained that they should not be taken as absolutely correct. Except where otherwise indicated the tracks are simply plotted between noon positions, and owing to the uncertainty of longitude observations, even these positions are sometimes only approximate. This is especially the case with the smaller cruisers, whose neglected movements are not infrequently vital to a correct view of fleet operations, such as Orde's retreat from Cadiz and Nelson's final decision to chase to the West Indies. In the important case, for instance, of the Iris, which observed Villeneuve's final movement from Ferrol, no one on board seems to have been able to work out a longitude at all. At least none are entered in her master's log, and in running down from Ushant she made Cape Penas instead of Ortegal, nearly a hundred miles to the westward.

In plotting the French tracks the difficulty of reaching precision has been even greater. They are primarily based on the charts given by Colonel Desbriere, but unfortunately these charts are not quite worthy of the rest of the work. They have required careful correction from the positions and courses recorded in the documents themselves. Sometimes these, too, are obviously false, especially in the case of Villeneuve's retreat from Ferrol and Cadiz ; and in these cases the track shown is that actually observed and reported by

PREFACE xi

our cruisers. When, as occurs in the most doubtful cases, two or more of such cruisers working independently give coinciding observations, the positions and course reported are taken as correct.

It is hoped that the movements and instructions of these cruisers, and indeed the whole system of scouting and intelligence, will be found an interesting feature of the book. Hitherto, owing to the unfortunate precedent set by James, cruiser work has usually been divorced from the major operations to which it belongs organically, and we have known little about it beyond the frigate actions that were fought. To naval officers, and indeed to all serious students of naval warfare, history so written must have a flavour of unreality that is little short of repellent. What they require is a co-ordinated account of the movements of all classes of ships engaged in each operation, and a clear knowledge of the instructions and intelligence under which it was carried out. In short, if Naval History is to establish itself as a matter of real instructional interest, students must be able to find in accounts of the old campaigns at least an indication of what they would look for in a report on manoeuvres to-day.

No one can approach our Naval History from this point of view, even in the tentative and imperfect manner that has been attempted in the following pages, without feeling how defective is the bulk of what we now possess. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the whole requires rewriting on Staff lines. But it is unlikely that so large and technical a task can ever be done adequately except by an Historical Section at the Admiralty. The need for such a Section is crying. Buried in our Naval Archives is a mass of lore, a body of matured tradition, such as no other country in the world possesses ; but it lies dormant and forgotten, a wasted power of incalculable force, that might be ours behind the guns and ours alone. But to re-awaken that tradition, to make it a living thing, as it was to Barham and Cornwallis and Nelson, to render it once more the active force that gave them nerve and initiative, and that certainty of touch which seems now almost miraculous, is xii PREFACE

beyond the reach of individual effort. It needs, no less than the most technical and material parts of the naval art, a laboratory where civilian and naval experts can work side by side to supply each other's defects and ripen each other's ideas.

It has indeed been suggested that a Professorship of Naval History at a University might supply the need. But however such a chair may succeed for Military History or for forming a sound national opinion, for the practical needs of the Service it seems foredoomed to failure. What is of the sea must breathe the breath of the sea. Without it it will pine in academical speculation. In salt water the old naval tradition was born, and by salt water alone can it be nourished. Sever the work of revival from the Admiralty and you sever it from the well-spring of that intangible spirit which is our peculiar asset. It is ours alone if we choose to use it. The most perfect organisation, the most scholarly research, the most elaborate technical science, cannot supply its place. It is the product of centuries of naval warfare, and it is we who have the centuries behind us. The atmosphere they have engendered is the soul of the matter, and nowhere out of intimate touch with the fleet can its inspiration be assured.

Some day, it may be hoped, the truth may be realised. Some day, perhaps, we shall recognise the value of the force by which alone we may bend again the bow of Odysseus ; and then a Historical Section will seem as indispensable a national asset as an experimental tank or a laboratory for high explosives.

J. S. C.

Contents

I. Pitt's War Policy II. Napoleon's First Miscarriage

III. Opening of the Campaign

IV. Villeneuve's Evasion .

Chapter I

When, in May 1804, Pitt returned to power it was with a determination to conduct the lingering war on the grand scale of his father and by his father's strenuous methods. Treasured among his papers of the time is an eloquent apostrophe urging him to rise up and take the place that had been held by William the Third, by Marlborough, and by his father : to set himself, as they had done, at the head of Europe against Europe's great oppressor, to stir the faint hearts of the Powers into united effort, and to remove from England the reproach that she had not produced a war minister since the great days of Chatham.

The people, realising how the country's strength had grown with the war, were looking to him to give expression to their rising spirit ; to teach them not only how to protect themselves from invasion, but how in the consciousness of their strength to strike down their arch-enemy as they had been wont to do in old days. In this spirit he gathered up the reins, and began at once to lay his widespread plans to give the war a new and more worthy presence.

Ever since we had broken the Peace of Amiens, our attitude, in effect, had been one of defence. Napoleon's unblushing contempt for his diplomatic engagements, and his unconcealed belief that by sheer truculence he could

2 PITT'S AVAR POLICY 1803

force us out of the European system altogether, had driven Addington's peace-loving Government to declare war.^ To wage it was another thing, and it quickly proved to be beyond their capacity. From the first they were dominated by the elaborate threat of invasion by which Napoleon seized the initiative. Seeing how weak was the army, it paralysed all hope of offensive action in Europe, and our confident enemy could make merry over a country that went to war to show that it could defend itself

Such offensive operations as were within their resources had been purely maritime — directed against the sea-borne trade of France and her minor colonial possessions. At the outbreak of hostilities our military strength in the West Indies was considerable, for the garrisons which had been in occupation of the French islands captured in the late war had not yet returned. These were well employed in retaking St. Lucia, which had come from long experience to be regarded as the key of the naval position in the Leeward Islands. So high, indeed, did it stand as a naval position that the question of its retrocession had almost wrecked the peace which ended the Seven Years' War. But, not content with this legitimate opening, the Government, in spite of the bitter lessons of the last war, proceeded to occupy Tobago and the four Dutch settlements of Demerara, Essequibo, Berbice, and Surinam. All these sickly stations required garrisons, and the result was to demobilise a serious proportion of our slender military force, and still further to reduce the possibility of a more active policy at home.'^

For these adventures Addington and his friends are now blamed without mercy, but candour and a reasonable knowledge of the political conditions should temper the habitual attitude of superiority which their critics are wont to adopt. To begin with, we had in any case no hope of being able to use our army in Europe with effect single-

^ For the recent French recognition of Napoleon's responsibility for the renewal of the war, see P. Coquelle, Napoleon and Evyland, translated by G. D. Knox. 1904.

^ Fortescue, County Lieutenants and the Army, p. 10.

i8o3 OUTBREAK OF THE WAR 3

handed, and at that time we were single-handed. And in the second place, the opening moves against the Dutch colonies were, in fact, a direct blow at the object we had in view. The real cause of the war, as is now admitted on both sides, was Napoleon's shameless behaviour to the United Provinces in breach of the Treaty of Luneville. Before the ink was Avell dry he had reduced Holland to the condition of a subject-ally of France. His similar behaviour in Northern Italy and Switzerland intensified the resentment his breach of faith aroused ; but the virtual annexation of Holland was what made a renewal of the war inevitable. It touched our traditional policy to the quick. The menace to our position in the Narrow Seas was one we had never been willing to endure. Now our reply was a refusal to evacuate Malta as provided by the Treaty of Amiens, and so the war broke out again. It was therefore a perfectly logical opening to strike at the Dutch colonies. It was a blow that could be dealt rapidly, and was well calculated to teach any man but Napoleon the lesson he could never learn. It told him plainly that, if France could find no room for England in the councils of Europe, there would be no room for a French empire beyond the seas.

But in political effect the West Indian conquests proved of no avail, and in the actual war they counted for nothing except in one not unimportant direction. The captured islands were a hotbed of privateering, and privateering was always the chief danger to our sea-borne commerce. Long experience had shown that it could not be dealt with effectually by pelagic operations alone. Addington's policy, therefore, has at least the justification not only of having dealt a direct blow at French commerce, and therefore at her finance, but also of having adopted the most effectual method of protecting our own. And, be it remembered, it was the retention of our financial position that eventually enabled us to beat Napoleon down ; it was our sole hope of securing allies : and furthermore our only possible means of offence for the moment was against French sea-borne commerce. It was a form of attack particularly embarrassing to a ruler like Napoleon, whose chief aim in consenting to a peace had been to restore his finances and his fleet. It is therefore perhaps too narrow a judgment to condemn the West Indian operations out of hand merely because they seem to sin against the principle of concentration, and were a form of war which of itself could never decide the issue. Where a maritime empire is concerned caution is required in applying the simple formula} of continental strategists. Oceanic and continental war differ widely in some of their cardinal conditions. It is not enough to apply the maxims of the one ^1^ to the intricacies of the other, and Addington's detractors should at least indicate in what direction the troops employed could have been used more profitably than in strengthening the position of the navy and lightening its burden.^

Every one was quick to see that something more drastic must be done in the future, and Pitt rose to power on a wave of opinion that the hour for a change was at hand. The military forces at home had considerably increased. We began the war with a home army of little more than 50,000 regulars; by the summer of 1804 we had 87,000, besides 80,000 militia and 343,000 volunteers, or over half a million men. Pitt's first measures were directed to increasing the regular force still further ; but even so, offence against such a poAver as Napoleon's was impossible single-handed. Only in alliance with the great military states of the continent could his father's methods be used, and simultaneously with the ripening of our striking energy alliances came in view.

It is here — in the negotiations and preliminary action for securing these alliances — that we find the key of the Trafalgar campaign. To treat it as the mere expression of the old policy of defence against invasion, which Pitt had resolved to abandon, is to seek for its meaning in vain. Yet it is on these lines the bulk of criticism runs, with the result that the real teaching has been almost entirely buried in a mass of erroneous strategical deduction. Through all

* Colonel Henderson, when head of the Staff College, used to lav down the rule that " the first duty of the J3ritish army was to assist the navy in getting command of the sea." And in this case the assistance was real and enduring.

iSo4 HIS ENTENTE WITH RUSSIA 5

this accumulation we must dig if we would recover the most precious treasure that naval experience has ever fashioned, and the first step towards recovery is to seek a simple understanding of Pitt's policy of military alliances. When Napoleon was trying to browbeat Addington's Government over their refusal to evacuate Malta — trampling on every decency of international comity — he had openly boasted that he had left England without an ally in Europe. She seemed to him helpless. In his almost crazy self-confidence he believed he could prevent the old causes producing the old effects and tread underfoot the fundamental laws which had given England her place in international politics ever since the European system had begun. Ignored by him, these laws began to reassert themselves almost immediately, and even before Pitt came back to power Russia had already made advances. Convinced by Napoleon's action in Holland, Italy, and Switzerland that he had not abandoned for a moment his ambitious dreams of European empire, she Avas bent on forming a defensive league to thwart his design.

It was where the danger touched her most nearly that England and England alone could give effective help. Napoleon was known to be cherishing a purpose to overrun the Ottoman Empire by way of Albania and Greece, and for this reason Russia had maintained a small squadron and a military outpost in Corfu and the Ionian Islands. We were as deeply concerned in Napoleon's design. For us Turkey was but a step on the path to India, and for this reason also we had clung, in the face of the Treaty of Amiens, to our hold on Malta. There was, moreover, another common interest at stake. It lay in Southern Italy, Avhich Napoleon was openly threatening, and which he seemed bent on making the starting-point of his Near Eastern enterprises. Russia had taken the Kingdom of Naples under her special protection; and by a tradition as old as Cromwell, the denying of the Two Sicilies to France had become as much a dominant note of our maritime policy as the integrity of the Low Countries had been from time immemorial.

Naturally, then, the Russian overtures were well received in London, and just as Pitt came to power Woronzow, the Czar's ambassador, was able to say that a large Russian force from the Black Sea would be sent to the Ionian Islands or to Italy as circumstances might require, and that the Czar hoped his Britannic Majesty would order a corps of troops to be kept at Malta in readiness to act in conjunction Avith those of Russia.^

It is here we pick up the thread that led directly to the decision at Trafalgar. Slender as it proved to be, it is the only sure guide through the labyrinth of the campaign. The splendour and tragedy of the great day of reckoning had long cast this guiding line into obscurity. Yet, so far as human judgment can tell, without the entanglement it Aveaved about Napoleon the most famous naval battle in history would not have been fought. It was an effort to cut himself free from it that cost Napoleon his fleet ; and unless we keep it securely between our fingers we must wander in error through the thronging movements of the year and never reach their real meanmg. Let us trace the spinning of it till its strands were securely twined.

The idea that was in the Czar's mind w^as to form, with British assistance and above all with British subsidies, a great defensive league with Austria, Prussia, and Sweden. Whether all or any of those Powers could be induced to join was doubtful. The formation of the league must at least take much time, during Avhich Napoleon might greatly strengthen his position. But in any event Russia and England could act together at once to bar his advance in the Mediterranean. Under the Treaty of Amiens he had agreed to evacuate the Neapolitan ports of Otranto and Taranto, in the south of Italy. But he had now reoccupied them, and from these points was not only threatening the Levant across the Adriatic, but was in a position to strike a sudden blow through Calabria at Sicily. It was vital to the situation that any such catastrophe should be prevented; and thus the idea of British troops in the

' J. Holland Rose, Schct Despatches rdat'auj to the Third Coalitiun (Rojal Historical Society, I'JUi), p. ix.

i8o4 IMPORTANCE OF SICILY 7

Mediterranean became as it were the symbol and test of Pitt's purpose. When he pressed that the league should be offensive and for immediate action, the Czar at once reminded, him that with respect to reinforcing our garrisons in the Mediterranean and assembling a corps of troops to act in Italy, Pitt had announced a delay of two or three months, not having as yet sufficient troops available for an expeditionary force. Admiral Sir John B. Warren, who was then our ambassador in Russia, immediately replied that a large part of the garrisons of Malta and Gibraltar could be spared at once and that the remainder of the British troops would soon follow if the Czar would only propose to enter into a treaty to unite the Powers into an offensive and defensive alliance.^ Within a month Russia had decided to send an ultimatum to Napoleon demanding the evacuation of Apulia, the arrangement of the affairs of Italy, compensation to the King of Sardinia for what had been taken from him, and the evacuation of North Germany. If there were no satisfactory answer in twenty-four hours his ambassador was to leave Paris.'^ Following on this resolute step Pitt sent out Lord Granville Leveson-Gower to replace Warren in order to negotiate a regular alliance, and the special instructions he carried Avere first to clear up a misunderstanding that had arisen as to the British view of Russian action in Italy. Pitt wished the Russians at once to seize the passes leading into Calabria from Taranto. The Czar thought he was being urged to drive the French out of the Kingdom of Naples single-handed, and Leveson- Gower was to assure him England knew that was impossible till Austria joined. But if he attempted the lesser operation two thousand troops from Malta w^ere ready to assist at once. The immediate British object was solely to prevent France seizing Sicily by a coup de main through Calabria. For without Sicily as a base of supply the position of our fleet in the Mediterranean would be very difficult to maintain.

1 Warren to Harrowbv, July 24, 1804 : Eose, Select Despatches relating to the Third Coalition (Eoyal Historical Society, 3rd Series), vol. vii. p. 25.

2 Ibid., p. 32, August 14.

The words in which these instructions were conveyed to Lcveson-Gower by Lord Harrowby, who was then Pitt's Foreign Secretary, are worth recording and remembering, for in them lies the exphmation of much naval strategy,' and in particular do they afford the key of Nelson's attitude to the Neapolitan question, and the complex naval problem which it involved. The actual situation at our point of contact with Russia turned upon the command of the Mediterranean, and that depended on Nelson's power of controlling the Toulon fleet— not necessarily of blockading it, but, as he preferred to say, on "holding it in check" till it could be met and destroyed. ''It would become doubtful," wrote Harrowby, in directing Gower to insist on the importance of immediate action, " whether the blockade of Toulon could be maintained as effectually as it has been hitherto [if Sicily were lost] ; and in case the French fleet should escape from that port and be able to detach any considerable force to the Adriatic, the Russian Government would do well to consider the danger to which their own squadron in those seas would be exposed, and the opportunity which would be afforded to the French of making a successful attack upon Albania and the Morea."

These were exactly Nelson's ideas. He was not of course blockading Toulon closely, but endeavouring to watch the Toulon fleet in such a way that if it attempted to get to the eastward and endanger what it was his special province to defend, it would certainly be brought to action. For this purpose Gibraltar and Malta w^ere of little use. As bases they were wrongly placed. What was wanted was one that Avould enable him to retain continuously the only position that was interior to either line of operation the French might adopt, whether westwards out of the Straits, or^ eastwards agahist Naples and the Levant. It was for this reason he always insisted that Sardinia and Sicily were the keys of the strategical situation.

"You will receive," Harrowby 's instructions to Gower went on, " the assurances which were given by me to Count Woronzow, that exertions would be made to increase the disposal force of the garrison of Malta: and you may i8o4 SARDINIA 9