of the line. On the other, Calder linked up with Cornwallis to tighten the
noose around Brest.
This was the moment when a French admiral of genius might have
acted decisively. If Villeneuve had headed back to Ushant immediately,
he would have caught the Royal Navy between two fires, fo rced either to
abandon the blockade of Brest or let the French into the Channel; the
danger was particularly acute since an error by Cornwallis at one stage
left just seventeen ships to dispute the entrance to the Channel. But he
dithered in Ferrol, pointlessly having his ships repainted while complain
ing to all who would listen that French naval tactics were obsolete.
Nelson meanwhile arrived at Gibraltar on zo July and at once headed
north to join his strength to that of Calder and Cornwallis. Thirty-six
battleships now barred the entry to the Channel. The end result of all
Napoleon's convoluted and serpentine global feints and stratagems was
that the Royal Navy was present in strength at exactly the right point to
destroy his invasion plans.
On 13 August Villeneuve learned of this new concentration of enemy
forces and in despair sailed south for Cadiz, where he allowed his
combined fleet to be bottled up by Admiral Collingwood with just three
ships - a stunning demonstration of the moral and psychological
advantage the Royal Navy enjoyed over its French counterpart. Unaware
of any of these developments, Napoleon arrived at Boulogne on 3 August,
imagining that the invasion launch was little more than twenty-four hours
away. But when he reached his headquarters at Pont-de-Brigues he was
alarmed to discover that all was not well even with the Boulogne flotilla.
There was no problem about transports: twelve hundred boats lay
ready at Boulogne and another eleven hundred at nearby ports. The naval
commissars in fact had done their work so well that there were more
boats than soldiers to fill them. Only 90,000 of the expected r so,ooo were
ready to move at a moment's notice and only 3,000 of the expected 9,ooo
cavalry horses. And, despite the fact that they had had two years to solve
the problem, Napoleon's marine engineers had not yet devised a way of
getting the flotilla out to sea on a single tide; it would still take three tides
to get the armada out on to the open Channel, thus lengthening the time
it would lie vulnerable to devastating attacks from the Royal Navy.
Morale was low among men who had been cooped up in barracks and
cantonments for two years, waiting for the signal that never came. There
were many altercations between bored and rampaging soldiers and local
civ ilians, including a notorious pitched battle in r8os between female
camp followers and local women, which reads like the village affray in
Tom Jones and produced more than fifty casualties.
marcin
(Marcin)
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