LITMIR.BIZ

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      A sandstone statue of Admiral Lord Nelson stands atop Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square. The 52-metre (169-foot) column was built between 1840 and 1843 to commemorate Nelson’s victories over the French.

      The ferocious battle between Victory and the French ships Bucentaure, Redoubtable and Neptune symbolized the whole afternoon of battle and illustrated the impact that Nelson’s courage and determination could have on the rest of his fleet. After taking terrible damage, Nelson pierced the French line and began his own cannonades against the enemy. His conspicuous uniform and his refusal to shelter made him an obvious target for enemy sharpshooters in the French rigging and at 1.25 p.m., he was shot through the shoulder. The bullet pierced his lung and crippled his spine. Nelson died three hours later in the ship’s primitive hospital. The fleet did not know this and fought as he had required them. By the time he died, some fifteen French and Spanish ships had already been captured as prizes, including Villeneuve’s flagship, which he surrendered shortly before Nelson’s death. British gunnery was lethal, particularly at close range, while marines and sailors stayed as far as possible below decks to avoid high casualties. British captains revelled in the ship-on-ship combat that now developed and not a single British ship surrendered, despite exceptional levels of damage, which left one vessel, the Bellisle, with no masts or bowsprit and no longer able to fire a gun. On both sides, masts and rigging crashed to the deck or into the sea. Thunderous cannonades destroyed the sides and decks, while fire directed at decks maimed and killed thousands on board, including the captain of the British ship Mars, whose head was blown off by a shot. In many cases the French or Spanish ships that surrendered had suffered no worse damage than the British ships to which they submitted.

      The battle was, as Nelson had hoped, ‘pell-mell’, but it was not a walkover. French and Spanish commanders, though in some cases unhappy about having to fight, gave as good as they got; all except Rear Admiral Dumanoir, whose ten ships took little part in the battle. Had they done so, the outcome might have been different. Some turned back to engage in the fight later in the afternoon, but Dumanoir and four vessels steered on towards Cádiz. They were captured a few days later by another British squadron. By 5.45 p.m., the battle was over, ended spectacularly by the explosion of the French Achille as it was devoured by fire. Collingwood succeeded Nelson as commander and could count nineteen enemy ships captured for the surrender of not a single British vessel. Franco-Spanish losses were 6,953 dead and wounded, while the British suffered just 449 dead, including Nelson, and 1,241 wounded. Most of the nineteen captured ships were lost on passage to Gibraltar in a storm (two escaped). Other French and Spanish ships sank or were captured in the next few days; of the thirty-three combined Franco-Spanish ships, twenty-three were lost and the rest badly damaged. Napoleon raged at news of the defeat, but Villeneuve was now safely a British prisoner.

      Trafalgar did not bring the war with Napoleon any closer to a conclusion. French shipyards turned out more vessels to replace those lost, but the balance of power at sea remained with the Royal Navy, an outcome that only in the long run contributed to the eventual collapse of the French Empire. Nelson became the most famous British hero of the nineteenth century, and in 1843 his completed granite column finally gazed out over the capital, its metal friezes fashioned from melted-down French guns captured at Trafalgar.

      There is perhaps no finer example of Napoleon’s remarkable military genius than the comprehensive defeat he imposed on a numerically superior Russian–Austrian force near the small Austrian town of Austerlitz at the height of the war between France and its allies and the Third Coalition of Britain, Russia and Austria. Napoleon was not diffident about his military reputation. In 1804, he had had himself crowned emperor in what was until then a new revolutionary and republican state; he had little respect for his enemies and great confidence in his capacity to out-think and out-fight them. This confidence was infectious. On the eve of Austerlitz, 1 December 1805, he was almost captured as he went with his guards to reconnoitre. On his return to camp, his troops spontaneously lit straw torches to light his way and struck up a strident chorus of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ With the cries echoing around him, Napoleon was heard to mutter ‘it has been the finest evening of my life’. The following day, the first anniversary of his coronation, was a remarkable triumph for Napoleon and his enthusiastic soldiers.

      The victory at Austerlitz came at an opportune moment. Napoleon’s Grande Armée was campaigning in cold winter weather far from France, deep in central Europe, and with the prospect, despite earlier victories, that Prussia might join the war and send a large army southwards. In late October, the British had contributed the decisive naval victory at Trafalgar to the Coalition’s efforts. A large Russian army, personally led into Europe by Tsar Alexander I, was supported by a smaller Austrian force, both approaching from the east. Napoleon needed to be sure that battle would be joined and won; he dispersed his forces to lure the Tsar into thinking that he was weaker than he really was. The bait was swallowed, and although some advisers wanted the Tsar to wait until even more reinforcements were available, he was impatient to impose his mark on European history by vanquishing the undefeated emperor of France. Once it was evident that battle was what the Coalition wanted, Napoleon drew up his main force at a battlefield of his own choosing and summoned the distant armies of Marshal Bernadotte and Marshal Davout to join him. The French would eventually have a mixed French and Italian force of 73,000 (not all of whom would see action) and 139 guns against a Coalition force of 85,700 with 278 guns spread across two or three fronts.