ARTICLES

Two revealing facts frame Napoleon's extraordinary military career. His first real engagement occurred in 1793 against the English during the siege of Toulon. The second was his last battle, by far the most disastrous, which took place June 18, 1815, in Waterloo, once more against the English. The day after his surrender, aboard the Bellerophon, Napoleon addressed the Lord Regent of England and asked him permission to sit, like Themistocle, at the British people's home, recognizing that Great-Britain had been the most loyal and the most constant of his enemies. The whole Napoleonic epic, through five coalitions, and a battlefield spread over the whole of Europe, is actually ruled by the struggle against England.
 
The first real contact Bonaparte had with the British problem happened after the Italian campaign and the Campo Formio Treaty, when the young general, wreathed with glory, met, October 27, 1797, the command of "the English Army " within the context of the preparation of a "raid ", in other words a landing.
The circumstances were seemingly favorable. France was at peace on the continent and the diplomacy of the Directoire had obtained a military alliance with Holland and Spain. We encounter the same situation in the American war where the coalition of the three secondary navies allowed, in theory, to be once more evenly matched with the Royal Navy. One never stresses enough that all the great conflicts from the war of succession in Spain until Trafalgar have almost always involved the naval forces of France and of Spain.
The results of this new association between Paris and Madrid were being felt as early as the autumn of 1796. The English squadrons evacuated the Mediterranean Sea. A few months later, they were paralyzed by mutinies serious enough to demand the transfer of the admiralty to Portsmouth.
After the failure of the famous "floating Republic", this movement appeared more like a strike than a political rebellion. It nonetheless immobilized the Royal Navy for long weeks.

Increase

At the time of his taking command on the Channel coasts, Napoleon was not a total stranger to "naval matters". He had observed much during the siege of Toulon. During the Italian campaign, he had sent to France - for the benefit of the navy - money and "naval ammunition", wood, hemp, cloth. His real initiation however dated from Venice, where he befriended the ordinance officer Forfait who turned out to be a excellent teacher.
Before relinquishing to Austria the city of Venice, he led to Toulon six vessels and two frigates in good condition and hastened the launch of five vessels later "guided" to France. The Venice interlude betrayed as well the outline of a Mediterranean policy. Bonaparte had ordered an attack plan of Malta be examined. And, above all, he proceeded to occupy the Ionian islands which will be attributed to the French Republic with the Campo Formio Treaty.
Bonaparte's journey along the Channel coasts was nonetheless brief. He limited himself to a cursory visit of the Pas-de-Calais harbors from February 8 to the 21, 1798. Two days later, the young general addressed to the Directoire an extremely pessimistic report. The flotilla necessary to convey 70,000 men, mostly troops of Italy, was still not ready. And it was too late in the season to attempt an operation which could only succeed, in his opinion, under cover of long winter nights.
Despite the admiral Truguet's mission to Madrid, the assistance of Spain was far from certain. As far as the English were concerned, they set up a counter-flotilla composed of light units. At last, the recovery of the Royal Navy was being confirmed. The British fleet had regained its balance and displayed a fearsome tactical superiority, as proven by the victory of Jervis, February 1797, at Cape Saint-Vincent against a Spanish squadron and the very recent success of Duncan at Camperdown, in October of the same year, against the Dutch fleet.
As far as the French navy was concerned, because of its lack of crews and the slowness of construction, it found itself unable to ensure the protection of a landing. In these conditions, Bonaparte's conclusion was clear : "To implement a landing in England without mastering the sea is the most daring and difficult operation." He therefore advised a postponement.

De facto, the French navy appears as the greatest victim of the Revolution. The victorious fleet of the American war did not exist anymore. The disorganization arose starting in 1789-1790 with the agitation of the harbor workers, crew mutinies and a massive emigration of the officers. May 1, 1791, the admiral Thevenard noticed there were only five admirals left out of forty two, forty two captains out of one hundred seventy, and three hundred fifty six lieutenants out of six hundred thirty.
To fill these vacuums, it was necessary to resort to massive enlistment of merchant ships' officers, pilots, naval officers, ordinary seamen, not to mention retired officers. The promotion of lieutenants was thus extraordinarily hastened.
A recovery started however during the Year II, thanks to the firm-handedness of the Comité de Salut Public and the ardor of some representatives on assignment, such as Jean Bon Saint-André. The naval arsenals were submitted to merciless management along with the mobilization of thousands of workers forced to abide by a stringent code of discipline and the requisition of raw materials. The officers' corps was purged and new massive promotions allowed to fill the holes in the executive ranks. The crews were also made up by the utilization of all the resources of the Register of Sailors.
Results were obtained. Admittedly, on June 1, 1794, Villaret Joyeuse's squadron was defeated, off Ouessant, against Howe's fleet, and lost seven vessels. But, the battle lasted three days and allowed a fresh supply convoy of a hundred vessels coming from the West Indies to get through and reach Brest, which was on the verge of starvation. In the Mediterranean Sea, the admiral Martin twice held firm. March 14, 1794, he lost two vessels, as many as the English. July 13, 1795, only one vessel.
The manoeuvering capabilities eventually appeared respectable. Officers and seamen displayed drive and determination. If the human losses were heavier than that of the English, it was incumbent to old mistakes : inadequate training, rate of fire too weak, dismasting fire... As stressed upon later by the admiral Jurien de La Gravière, "No feeling yet of this inferiority Villeneuve would declare with so much discouragement a few years later."
A relapse occurred nonetheless during the following months, felt during the Groix affair, after the failure of a landing in Quiberon by a group of emigrants. The French losses were five times heavier than those of the English. The admiral Truguet, who became Minister of the Navy under the Thermidor Convention, implemented then a second set of reforms, largely inspired by the institutions of the Ancien Régime.
The registration of sailors was restored to its 1789 basis. The election of syndics disappeared. Numerous officers of Louis XVI's navy were reinstated: Brueys, Villeneuve, du Chayla, Dupetit-Thouars. This recovery was, however, hampered by inflation and the comeback of liberalism. The naval dockyards lacked essential products. Workers, ill-paid and submitted to unbearable discipline, deserted. The lack of crews again reached important proportions, worsened by the fact that the two main regions of recruitment, West and Southeast, became centers of counter-revolution.
The most serious phenomenon, however, was the growing demoralization of the officer corps, linked to the degradation of the fleet and which would lead to a feeling of helplessness, with the loss of all offensive spirit and the taking of refuge in sterile inaction.

This material and moral crisis occurred, by an irony of history, at the moment when the British navy became a splendid instrument of war and accomplished at sea the revolution which the French army had made on dry land. This transformation came first of all from the tactical innovations linked to an effort of reflection, partly in thanks to the book of the Scotsman Clerk, Essay on Naval Tactics.
The British admirals progressively freed themselves from the sacrosanct file line favoured in the 18th century and at the origins of sterile cannon fires. They did not hesitate, in attacking into the wind, to bring their efforts on the center or rear guards of the enemy, indeed to break the enemy front, according to the method used by Duncan at Camperdown, which will be reused by Nelson at Trafalgar.
This tactical innovation showed its worth only thanks to an impressive improvement of fire. Turning the best account of the new technical procedures : percussion caps, cannon shells, spacing of the cannons, practising an intensive training, the British gunners obtained a fire twice as fast, twice as precise than that of the French or the Spanish. At the moment of crossing the line, they shot imposing broadsides at point-blank range against the very vulnerable rear part of the vessels of the time, with devastating effects. They still shot "full wood", board to board, within half a gun's reach. Crossing the wall, the cannonballs discharged in the batteries lethal wood fragments which caused a slaughter amongst the men.
Another element : a new generation of young leaders, such as Duncan, Jervis, Cornwallis, Nelson, who practiced with ardor and conviction the massive attack and the close combat. Unlike the French navy, the cohesion between officers was admirable, to the point of leading to the "gang of brothers ", advocated by Nelson and which ends with a team fight.
This behavior is favored as well by a last element, specific to an ideologic war, the moving forces of passion, as underlined once more by Jurien de la Gravière : "Instead of these young nobles who fight while laughing, two peoples trying relentlessly to destroy one another; instead of this warlike mood without gall, a deep and obstinate feeling... Seeing the masses raised by this fanatic zeal and pushed against the enemy, one can sense that the old strategy will be insufficient for such fights and such passions."
French officers and crews remained no strangers to this fervor. But, lacking in qualities of manoeuver, prisoners of outdated shooting methods, they could only endure the clash and die stoically. They would prove it at Aboukir, Trafalgar, or Saint-Domingue, during the first great annihilation battles.
In the meantime, the state of the navy could only arouse contempt from the young generals of the "English army". Without using the brutal expressions of Kléber : "Casabianca often told me that it is a foul corpse, and he was not mistaken" or of Belliard : "The damned sailors are not better on fresh water than on sea water" or of Hoche : "Our detestable navy cannot and does not want to do anything... What a weird compound : a large corps whose parts are divided and incoherent ; the organized indiscipline in a military corps... proud ignorance and stupid vanity..." Bonaparte could not help saying to Marmont : "There is nothing to do with these people, they have no power of execution. We would need a flotilla and already the English have more boats than us. The essential preparations are beyond us. We have to get back to our Oriental plans, where we can obtain great results."

One has much expatiated upon the origins of this expedition in Egypt, which will be the source of new miseries for the navy. One put forward the desire of the Directoire to take away a young general, ambitious and worrying, or Talleyrand's policies. The minister of external relations did not actually hide his hostility against a stubborn war against England, whose political and social system seemed to him useful for the balance of Europe. A revolution in Ireland or England could only lead to new convulsions. The revolutionary France must direct its energies beyond the seas. Also, one cannot deny Bonaparte's motives, the oriental dream, the hope to find again in Egypt the exhilarating freedom of action he felt in Italy.
This interest dates back to the previous summer. On August 16, 1797, he wrote to the Directoire : "The times are not so far away when we will feel that, in order to destroy England, we have to seize Egypt." At his headquarters in Passeriano, he gathered solid documentation about this country. The vice-admiral Rosily, head of the maps and plans depot, sent him complete documentation.
This interest for Egypt was not actually original. Since the beginning of the 18th century, Egypt was fashionable. Leibniz, the first, advised Louis XIV to seize it thanks to a division in the Ottoman empire. Saint-Priest, ambassador at Constantinople, made in 1777 the same suggestion to undermine "the English domination of Bengal." His successor, Choiseul-Gouffier, repeated the same advice. The Baron de Tott, the lieutenant of Lalaune were at the origins of a wealth of information. In 1788, at last, the Lettres sur l'Egypte by Savary and Le Voyage en Syrie by Volney drew the public's attention.
On a military level, Egypt attracted the attention of the "plan makers" of the 18TH century. The idea of an expedition appeared in the Duc de Broglie's of 1776 which circulated, twenty years later, between the offices of the ministry of war and those of the ministry of the navy. All these plans were based on the idea of a diversion in the oriental part of the Mediterranean Sea, meant to dismiss the British naval forces. This diversion integrated well into Truguet's strategy, initiated by the Thermidor Convention. The French navy had eventually to give up squadron war and to tend to privateering. "This system will better fulfill the real interests of the nation than these vain displays of naval power... The English government could, if it is its wish, strut about with its squadrons; the French will merely attack that which it holds dear, that which makes its happiness, in its wealth." Simultaneously, the navy should launch expeditions by surprise on the sensitive points likely to affect England. Truguet cited Ireland and Egypt.
The first expedition in Ireland waged December 1796 under the command of Hoche ended in a bitter failure linked to awful weather, the irresolution of the players and the passivity of the Irish. Despite the assurances of some emigrant leaders such as Wolfe Tone, the announced uprising did not happen. And neither did it happen with the landing of the small task force of general Humbert, as it had not occurred in 1690. Ireland like Scotland were finally sources of disappointment for the French strategy.
Bonaparte's strategic view was perfectly conformed to the "plan makers'" and Truguet's conceptions. A powerful diversion had to be implemented which would lead the Royal Navy to dismiss its forces. In a note dated April 13 addressed to the Directoire, Napoleon was very self-confident : "the expedition in the Orient will force England to send six more vessels to India, and maybe two times more frigates to the entry of the Red Sea. It would be compelled to have from twenty-two to twenty-five at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, sixty vessels in front of Brest and twelve in front of the Texel, which would form a total of a hundred and three vessels, without counting the ones it has in America and in India, or without counting ten to twelve vessels it would be forced to have to oppose an invasion of Boulogne."
These were somewhat whimsical evaluations. Why sixty vessels in front of Brest, while the Ponant squadron could not arm more than twenty to twenty-five big ships ? Bonaparte obviously shared the illusions of the great strategists of the previous century who were expecting extraordinary results from faraway cruises.
The fact remains nonetheless that the dispersion of the forces of the Royal Navy should have allowed the landing during the winter 1778-1779. The whole summer should have been given over to the organization of the flotilla entrusted to Forfait. It should have allowed as well a strong naval concentration in Brest where the fourteen vessels of the Mediterranean Sea would be led once the Egypt expedition arrived at its destination. As for the Dutch navy, twelve vessels; it should be able to send 10,000 men to the Scotland coasts. "Implemented this way and during the months of brumaire and frimaire, the invasion of England would be almost certain," Bonaparte asserted.
The Egyptian events would have, moreover, an economic advantage. Forced to send forces in all directions, "England would exhaust itself from a tremendous effort which would not guarantee it from our invasion." "War forces it to make significant preparations which are ruining its finances, destroying the spirit of commerce and absolutely changing the constitution and the customs of this people." Therefore, the expedition integrates perfectly in French military thought of the 18th century. It constitutes an excellent example of the indirect strategy.

Increase

It is not suitable here to relate the history of the expedition. Under Bonaparte's and his officers' initiatives, the "Commission d'armement sur les côtes de Méditerranée" made a significant effort. With quickly composed crews, the fleet placed fifty-five war ships and two hundred eighty transportation vessels under the command of Brueys, carrying 38,000 men. Starting on May 12, preparations for casting off were made in Marseille, Toulon, Genoa and Civitta Vecchia. They eluded Nelson's watch who was back in the Mediterranean Sea as of May 2. "As interesting as a novel's episode," according to Bonaparte's words, the cruise, marked by obvious luck, went in with incomparable ease and majesty. On the way, Malta was taken on June 12 without resistance, and the fleet arrived in front of Alexandria July 1. The landing occurred without mishap. While Bonaparte immediately took the direction of Cairo, Brueys anchored with the thirteen vessels of his squadron in Aboukir harbor.
It was only on August 1, at the end of the afternoon, that Nelson, after an incredible race through the Mediterranean Sea, arrived in view of Aboukir. He immediately attacked and caught the French vanguard and center in a pincer movement. In less than twelve hours success was obtained, a total victory. Nine vessels are captured. Among the French, 1,500 were killed, the same amount of prisoners taken and 3,000 were wounded. Brueys and Dupetit-Thouars perished during the battle.Only two vessels and two frigates of the rear guard, under the command of Villeneuve, escaped disaster. Once again the British navy demonstrated its marked superiority.
The Aboukir defeat was due to a certain number of reasons which were purely naval: poor condition of the vessels and an insufficient number of gunners which did not allow them to fire from both sides. It also stemmed from it being a nighttime engagement, an unusual battle that confounded the French. It was due as well to an act of negligence, hard to explain, by Brueys, with a "disastrous position" as some would underline the day after the defeat. For the ensign Lachadenède, this position "shocked in all points the principles of military art. We were anchored at 35 feet, we had still half a league to cover to reach the four-foot depth, so that everywhere, between us and the land, there was enough water to manoeuver the vessels."
Finally the last reason, Aboukir illustrates once again the lack of cohesion and solidarity between the captains of the French vessels, which sharply contrasted with the British "gang of brothers." While the English successively attacked French ships with groups of three or four and crushed them with their fire, the center and vanguard vessels contented themselves to wait for the shock and did not try to come to the rescue of their comrades. Later on, Villeneuve had claimed he did not see Brueys' signals. Actually, an elementary reflex should have incited him to try everything to participate in the fight, instead of taking flight.
In any case, the results were catastrophic. Bonaparte, with one of the best armies of the Republic, was prisoner of his conquest. The repercussions of Aboukir were considerable in the entire Orient. For the English, the relief was tremendous. August 20, Nelson sent a message to the governor of the Indies announcing that under cover of "the Nile victory", all danger was ruled out. He did not take lightly the threat against the Indies. A month before Aboukir, he wrote to Jervis, First Lord of the Sea, "an enterprising enemy could very easily... lead an army to the Red Sea coasts... It would take hardly three weeks to carry its troops on to the coast of "Malabar." Grateful, the Indies company hastened to vote in the favor of Nelson a gift of 10,000 pounds.

The British victory had another result. It laid the foundations for the 2nd coalition. Naples, Russia and the Ottoman empire declared war on France. The Russian fleet along with Turkish ships undertook the expulsion of the French from the Ionian islands. Paul I did not hide anymore his Mediterranean ambitions. October 1798, he was appointed Headmaster of the Chevaliers of Malta's Order.
But there was something more serious. The coalition made Egypt directly threatened from land and sea, from Alexandria and from Syria. The British naval supremacy will be one of the essential reasons for the failure of the campaign implemented in the north by Bonaparte, February 24, 1799, after the capture of Gaza. Despite the victory at Mount Thabor, Bonaparte could not seize Saint-Jean d'Arc provided with fresh supplies and supported by the British navy. Back in Egypt, he succeeded, however, to crush at Aboukir a Turkish army landed by the English. Three months later, in Damiette, a second Ottoman army was pushed back to the sea. The situation of the Egyptian army, more and more weakened, remained nonetheless without prospects. All the worse, an attempt to extricate by sea ended up in an irritating failure. In spring 1798, despite of the privation of the Brest arsenal, Bruix succeeded in arming twenty-five vessels. Eluding the English blockade force which believed in a threat against Ireland, the admiral succeeded in getting out April 25.
According to his instructions, he must rally the Spanish squadron of Cadix, penetrate into the Mediterranean Sea, take troops onto the coasts of Liguria, reinforce the garrison of Malta, and then reach Egypt and embark upon Bonaparte's army. Bruix did not manage the union with the Spanish, but he succeeded in penetrating into a Mediterranean Sea where the British forces of Keith were scattered from Minorca to Alexandria, incapable of a united reaction. A deep anguish reigned in the British Admiralty.
Bruix, however, did not believe in luck. He entered Toulon on May 13, and contented himself to provide fresh supplies to the army of Masséna in Liguria. On the 22nd, he managed to rejoin the Spanish squadron coming from Cadix at Carthagene, but he could not resolve to reach Egypt. Despite a highly favorable situation, he retook the Atlantic route and reached Brest August 3 with about forty Franco-Spanish vessels. The British reaction was immediate. Brought up to fifty ships, the Channel squadron immediately put the main body of the Franco-Spanish forces "under lock and key."
Bruix' exit is characteristic of the naval war conditions of these times, marked by the absence of information ties. The weakness of the British secret service was real, but Bruix did not know, even did not dare, to exploit a godsend situation. Here is new evidence of this discouragement, this lack of offensive ardor prevailing amongst the French admirals, following successive defeats and due to the conviction of an irreversible sense of inferiority.
Bruix' abortive attempt could only incite Bonaparte to get out of the Egyptian trap. August 21, 1799, in conformity with his instructions and without having received the recall order from the Directoire, he secretly left Egypt, leaving the command of the army to Kléber. The navigation of two frigates, La Muiron and La Carrière, which were carrying Napoleon and a few officers, benefited once more from extraordinary good luck. The strait of Sicily, usually watched over, was crossed without mishap. Arriving on the Provence coasts, a providential mist hid the small fleet from the supervising squadron of Keith. On the morning of October 9, the two frigates anchored at the Saint-Raphaël harbor. Three weeks later, the coup d'état of Brumaire 18th occurred.

Increase

After the coup d'état, Napoleon buckled down to a tremendous task which can be summed up in one word: peace. This was in response to the general wish of the population who, after ten years of ordeals, longed for an inside pacification and an outside peace.
At the end of 1799, after the victories of Brune at Texel and of Masséna at Zurich, the risk of an invasion was dismissed and the Czar Paul I, humiliated by the defeats of his armies, was about to retire from the coalition. Two other resounding successes then caused Austria to give in. Marengo was won by Bonaparte himself, June 14, 1800, and Hohenlinden, December 3, which opened to Moreau the road to Vienna and pushed the Emperor to request peace. The Lunéville treaty of February 9, 1801 confirmed the clauses of Campo Formio.
Great Britain remained then almost alone in the fight. To intensify its isolation, Bonaparte made use of the "Power of wings" union which would haunt him during his entire reign, by implementing a reconciliation with Russia and by exploiting the hostility arisen among the neutral countries by the economic war methods of England.
As soon as December 1799, the First Consul annulled the decree of January 18, 1798 saying that a neutral boat loaded with English goods was a good catch. By the Mortefontaine treaty of September 30, 1800, he ended the "near war" on the seas with the United States caused by the privateers' actions in the West Indies. By this agreement, which laid the foundations for a new naval law, Bonaparte made himself, quite cleverly, the champion of the neutral countries' freedom. Every party was free to go to any harbor belonging to the other's enemy, except if a blockade was in effect. The treaty laid the principle of a flag covering the goods and established a very restrictive list of contraband goods...
The Mortefontaine agreement occurred at an extremely favorable moment. Some very serious incidents in the Baltic Sea saw Dutch ships opposing English boats. London retaliated with an ultimatum. Outraged by this reaction in a sea that was under Russian sphere of influence, Paul I, on August 27, persuaded Copenhagen, Stockholm and Berlin to associate with him "to restore in their entire scope the principles of armed neutrality and insure therefore the freedom of the seas."
The northern powers did not hesitate to get more involved. In Spring 1801, Denmark occupied Lubeck and Hamburg, while Prussia seized Hanover, the personal possession of the king of England. The British cabinet could only brutally react to a threat that concerned an essential zone for its procurement of wheat, salted fish and "naval ammunition" such as wood, hemp...
March 23, 1801, Paul I is murdered at Saint-Petersburg, and April 2, a squadron commanded by Parker with Nelson as a subordinate, opened fire on Copenhagen. After four hours of fierce battle, the Danish, who had lost six vessels and 1,800 men, accepted a moderate armistice cleverly presented by Nelson, himself in a difficult position. But April 9, officially warned of the Czar's death, the Danish left the league. During the following weeks, the British squadron carried on with its demonstration in the Baltic Sea. And on June 17 a Anglo-Russian naval convention was realized.
For Bonaparte, the Copenhagen affair, the reversal of Alexander I, and the successor of Paul I, constituted serious disillusion. The hope of building a continental front against England vanished. This situation risked challenging his Mediterranean policy. The First Consul had actually played the card of a Russian penetration. When he took power, he enticed the czar with a division plan of the Ottoman empire, all while approving his claims on Malta over whose Order he became the Headmaster.
Bonaparte also approved the treaty of Constantinople of March 21st 1800 which gave birth to an independant republic of the "Seven islands Reunited" (the Ionian islands), recognized vassal of the Porte, but where the Russian had the right to hold garrison. He accepted as well the military protection given by the czar to the metropolite Pierre I of Montenegro. In connection with the Florence treaty, which authorized France to put garrisons in the harbors of Brindisi and Ancône belonging to the Naples Kingdom, the entire policy of Bonaparte had therefore been aimed at worsening the Anglo-Russian antagonism and to expel Great Britain from the Oriental part of the Mediterranean Sea. These policies supposed a remnant of a French presence in Malta and Egypt.

Increase

The First Consul had increased its efforts to extend the resistance in these two strategic points. These attempts ended in two resounding failures, which would confirm the wearing out of the French naval forces. February 18, 1800, Rear Admiral Perrée's division, which had cast off from Toulon bound for Malta, was intercepted and almost totally destroyed by a squadron of five vessels commanded by Nelson. The situation of Vaubois, besieged in La Valette became then tragic. Vanquished by starvation, it had to capitulate September 5, 1800. The operations around Malta had cost the navy four vessels, along with three frigates and a large number of light ships; that is, the last active naval forces of the Mediterranean Sea.

Increase

The attempts towards Egypt are not successful either. At the beginning of 1800, the situation of the task force appeared extremely precarious. Discouraged for a moment, Kléber ended up accepting through the El Arish Convention of January 28 the repatriation of his troops by English boats. But the agreement was broken by the English cabinet. London wanted a total victory. Kléber's answer happened March 19, 1800 with a resounding victory at Heliopolis where an Anglo-Turkish army was completely destroyed. But, three months later, Kléber was unfortunately murdered and the incompetent Menou succeeded him.

The English were at this time determined to put an end to this situation. At the beginning of 1800, a huge expedition left Wight island. After feints at Quiberon, Le Ferrol and Cadix, it embarked at Gibraltar the 16,000 men of Abercrombie and headed towards the Oriental part of the Mediterranean Sea. The Anatolia coast was reached in December, where a reinforcement of Ottoman troops was expected. At the same time, another Turkish army was to advance into the attack through the isthmus of Suez. In the Indies, lastly, Arthur Wellesley, who would become Lord Wellington, after having crushed the uprising of Tippo Sahib, was about to land a third army on the coasts of the Red Sea and act in High Egypt. For Bonaparte, the reinforcement of the Egypt army, reduced to 12,000 men, became absolutely necessary. January 1800, Brest succumbed to the British blockade and poorly joined inside Brittany, could only arm thirty-five Franco-Spanish vessels carrying 5,000 troops. A year later, January 23, 1801, Ganteaume managed to trick the English crossing, thanks to an East wind. But, if he could have embarked the 5,000 men of the Sahuguet corps, he only made use of seven vessels and two frigates.

Increase

February 9, he crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and escaped Warren's watch. Then the Bruix affair, like two years before, happened again. Ganteaume, as well demoralized, did not believe in his luck. Giving up Egypt, he reached Toulon, and missed, according to Jervis, an exceptional opportunity. "If the French squadron had continued directly to Alexandria, in conformity with its orders, Lord Keith would have been beaten in detail, the French army efficiently provided with men and means, and our efforts completely frustrated." There is here a large part of exaggeration. With tired and overloaded ships, Ganteaume would have had difficulties fighting a good battle.
Bonaparte was nonetheless terribly disappointed, all the more because the negotiations just started with the English and that Egypt was at the heart of the talks. The First Consul sent new instructions. Ganteaume should cast off at once, and, if he could not reach Egypt, land his troops in Derna, in the middle of the desert, 800 km from Alexandria ! The admiral obeyed. Having at his disposal only four vessels and 2,000 troops, he attempted to land, June 8, 160 km from Alexandria. The operation was interrupted by the arrival of Keith's squadron. Cutting their mooring cables, the French ships, except two transports, managed a narrow escape.
A last attempt was occurring at the same time. Bonaparte provided a Franco-Spanish concentration in Cadix with Bruix' five vessels coming from Rochefort, and Linois' three ships cast off from Livourne. The concentration could not occur. This affair ended July 6 in a battle. Moored at the bottom of the Algesiras bay, Linois repelled an English attack led by Saumarez. The latter took his revenge, the 12th, in the Straits of Gibraltar. He dismantled a Franco-Spanish squadron whose remnants found refuge in Cadix.
On the whole, out of all the ships sent to the rescue of the French army, only two frigates, Le Justice and l'Égyptienne, having left from Toulon January 24, 1801, could land 700 men in Alexandria for reinforcement. Egypt was lost. The triple British offensive arose in massive scale. The French army found itself cut in two with Belliard in Cairo and Menou in Alexandria. The first capitulated June 27 and the latter, September 1, on the eve of the signature of the peace preliminaries between France and England.

Increase

In his fight against England, Bonaparte did not content himself with an indirect strategy, with the "Power of wings" union and the Neutrals league, or the maintaining of a military presence in Malta and Egypt. He threatened again a "raid" on England.

Starting in March 1801, the First Consul showed a new interest in the Channel flotilla, abandoned since 1798. The admiral Latouche-Tréville received the commands and Forfait was invited to start building one hundred fifty flat boats and to proceed with the requisition of hundreds of fishing and coastal ships from Brittany to the Netherlands. Latouche-Tréville advised to embark the troops for Dunkerque, Boulogne and Calais and to start the operation under the cover of the stillness of August, while Bonaparte advocated the heart of winter. As the First Consul declared to Cambacérès and Lebrun, it was only, actually, a mere demonstration, a manoeuver of brainwashing. De facto, no concentration of troops materialized on the Channel coast. Some forces, hardly sufficient for keeping order, remained. However, the result was attained. The threat caused strong emotion in the British population, all the more because England had at his disposal only 75,000 men for its defense, including 25,000 regulars. To calm these apprehensions, Jervis, who became Lord Saint-Vincent, gave Nelson command of the coasts.
In conformity with his temper, the victor of Aboukir decided to attack the flotilla in its harbors. But the attempts of August 3 and 4 remained without results and the one of August 17 ended in a bitter defeat. The bombards and mortar boats of the rear flotilla could not force the fore and aft mooring lines and collided with a violent reaction with the flat boats' artillery and especially with the coastal batteries. Nelson assessed, nonetheless, the real value of the threat. "This story of the boats," he underlined, "can be part of an invasion plan, but could not constitute one by itself."

Increase

In the meantime, faced with general nervousness, the British government signed the peace preliminaries of October 1, 1801, confirmed in Amiens May 27. The treaty was virtually mute concerning the continent. The main part concerned the colonies and the Mediterranean Sea. England promised to evacuate Egypt and to give Malta back to the Chevaliers under the guarantee of a third-party rule. In exchange, France had to give up Rome and the Napolitan harbors. England gave back to France and the Netherlands all their colonies including The Cape, except Trinity and Ceylan. It was, in the end, a reluctantly reached compromise. The Amiens treaty appeared essentially as the result of "reciprocal impotence" and also as "an experience lasting six months or one year" according to the words of Hawkesbury.

In reality, this peace was a mere truce of only a few months. Judging the experience inconclusive, London took the initiative of breaking it in May 1803. In fact, the French influence strengthened in Western Europe. The expansion also concerned overseas territories. Bonaparte wanted, by re-establishing slavery, to restore the West Indies' prosperity which partly influenced, on the eve of the Revolution, that of France itself. He wanted then to restore French authority over Guadeloupe, Martinique and especially Saint-Domingue which was dominated by rebels led by Toussaint-Louverture. This affair ended with an awful sanitary disaster which almost totally annihilated the 25,000 men of General Leclerc's task force.
If London did not take offense from the retaking of the West Indies, other French initiatives appeared more threatening. Bonaparte intended to organize and exploit Guyana and above all Louisiana, retroceded by Spain in 1801. The navy increased reconnaissance missions in the Indian Ocean, at Mascate, at Madagascar, and even in India where Decaen was appointed general captain of the French trading posts. It was the mission of General Sebastiani in Tripolitaine, in Syria and in Egypt which highly irritated the British cabinet, all the more because of the report of a French general, known in London, sketched out "in a swaggering and insolent tone" a reconquest of Egypt.
Other elements appeared still more troubling. Determined to preserve the French economy, Bonaparte played the card of protectionism that would end with a spread throughout Western Europe, through trade treaties concluded with the vassal States, which gave to France the status of most favoured nation. This policy led to a noticeable regression of English exports.
At the end of 1802, the intransigence was victorious. If The Cape was given to the Dutch forces, London would refuse to evacuate Malta, as long as it would not get the insurance of a reestablishing of the state of 1801 Europe. A dialogue of the deaf started. The British cabinet wanted to stick to the spirit of the Amiens treaty, Bonaparte to the letter. On May 12, 1803, the breach was confirmed. One could always regret this breach and wonder if France did not at that time miss an exceptional opportunity. With a remarkable army, the "natural borders", a freeze of vassal states, its security was then acquired.
Cautious politics would have probably allowed to insure a long term peace on the continent and overcome the powers' reserves.
On condition of prohibiting haste, Bonaparte could have restored and re-established the prosperity of the colonial empire and rebuilt a powerful navy. In short, he could have been inspired by the policies Choiseul had implemented after 1763. Actually, Bonaparte's impatience and haste re-ignited a conflict that would soon have two fronts and lead to a terrible adventure.

France found itself again in a war against England and started this conflict in the worst of conditions. In ten years, from 1793 to 1803, this navy had been through a descent into Hell. Of forty-seven vessels and sixty-seven frigates which had been built, the losses, for different reasons, reached respectively sixty-eight and one hundred two. During the brief interruption of hostilities, no serious rebuilding could be made. At least fifteen years of peace would have been necessary, just like after the Seven Years war. On the contrary, the fleet had been extremely preoccupied by the huge expedition to the West Indies and by the cruises led in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Indian Ocean.
In 1803, the results were disastrous. The new minister of the Navy, Admiral Decrès, had at his disposal only thirteen large ships. He expected to have thirty-two at the end of the year and fifty-six in 1805. In reality, the strength of forty-five was reached, with difficulty, and the Dutch contribution, estimated at twelve vessels, reached only seven. Most of these ships were old, tired and had construction faults.
The navy suffered also from an extremely serious lack of real sailors. As soon as the war started again, the Royal Navy, following a strong tradition, rushed to seize on the sea or in the British harbors the greatest number of French merchant ships possible, capturing thousands of crew members. By resorting to all the resources of the sailors register, by enlisting all men from age fifteen to fifty-five, a force of 42,000 men was established, with difficulty, and 20,000 of them were immediately enrolled in the Boulogne flotilla.
The situation of the officers' corps was not any brighter. In 1802, Forfait, then Minister of the Navy, had to admit it. "Let us admit it, to our navy's shame, almost all the officers are like this; they occupy themselves and their time aboard and in the harbors, doing everything but their profession; boredom is consuming them, disgust is following them, and their faculties are losing their fine edge." Two years later, Latouche-Tréville could only confirm this judgement.
The same went for the superior officers and admirals after the restructuring of Truguet and the Consulate. Already officers before the Revolution, they held nostalgia for the old navy. They did not lack courage or competence but they were almost all disenchanted, skeptical and resigned to defeat. Remaining in their hearts monarchist, they displayed no deep loyalty towards the government, and sharply contrasted with the young generals of the army, who were of common birth, and, stemming from the fast promotions of the Revolution, full of ardor and used to victory.
Clique jealousies and quarrels remained. If the cliques of Morard de Galles and Villaret Joyeuse have almost disappeared, they have been replaced by the group Decrès, Ganteaume, Bruix and Villeneuve. In a strong position because of the remembrance of the Egyptian campaign, they exerted a deep influence on Napoleon and managed to push Villaret, Martin and even Forfait out. Among the best, death prematurely hit Latouche-Tréville in 1804 and Truguet was dismissed for his republicanism.

Increase

Despite the decay of the navy, Bonaparte was determined to cut the Gordian knot. The "Great Army" was concentrated in Picardie and efforts carried on for the development of a new flotilla, different from those of 1798 and 1801. Under the impetus of Bruix and the engineer Tupinier, in charge of the commands and the realization, the enterprise took on important proportions.

Hundreds of flat boats were being built from the Atlantic harbors to those in Holland. There was also construction in building sites established on the interior rivers, the Seine and the Loire, in Paris, and even in Colmar.
With more than two thousand ships in 1805, the flotilla was formed by a whole range of different boats meant to land easily on beaches : 35-meter prams carrying 200 soldiers, 24-meter rowing gunboats for the transportation of men and materials, 18-meter landing crafts able to carry sixty men. All these ships carried one or several large caliber guns, 18 to 36, and were driven by sail or oar.
The organization and discipline remained military. The flotilla numbered sixteen divisions pooled in army corps. The " raid ", anticipated without the participation of the squadrons, was identified with the crossing of a large river. A vision that we will find again in 1940 with some German generals such as Manstein.
This use came from the idea of Forfait, summed up in a small opuscule published in 1802, entitled Lettres d'un observateur de la Marine. Towards the adversary, Forfait shared the opinions and prejudices of the majority of his contemporaries. Nourished with Antiquity, he likened the English nation, venal and treacherous, to Carthage. He estimated also that in present circumstances, "these rulers of the seas will never give the time necessary to recreate and form a navy through ordinary means, merchant navigation and fishing"... "Count on the fact that they will always declare war on you, or will do it without declaring it, before your naval forces could reach a level of development worrisome for them."
To be victorious, France had to take inspiration from Rome which triumphed over Carthage in its own field by transferring its military qualities into a naval war. This was an allusion to the "corvus", a folding footbridge which allowed a troop of legionnaires to attack and capture a Carthaginian vessel. This was all the more valuable seeing that the military capabilities of England "remained far behind those of the French nation."
The French government should therefore "give to the naval army a fully military consistency and bring closer the Army and the Navy with a new institution which commands the geographic position and the political situation of France against England." Composed of rowing and sailing ships, the French forces "would follow in the steps of the naval forces of the Ancients where the same men who composed the Armies fought, and where almost the same orders and the same tactics were used."
Acting in numbers, these boats carrying "naval soldiers" grouped in regiments or in divisions would lay ambushes, and attempt more important operations. These "exercises would appeal to the French because they would be a reflection of those of the army"... "Men will have two motives of encouragement, the commerce of the English to destroy, and England to conquest, fortune and glory would open to these hero-freebooters all the sources of pleasure which are so much the national taste." There is no doubt that Forfait's ideas had exerted a strong influence on Bonaparte, as proven by the plan of July 21, 1803. The flotilla had to do without the support of the navy. From the harbors of Boulogne, Calais, Étaples and Ambleteuse, it would cross the Channel by surprise, at night, during the bad season, maybe by rowing. If necessary, its artillery would allow it to open a path in the middle of the watching English forces.

In fact, the flotilla soon revealed worrisome weaknesses. The ships revealed to be particularly mediocre. In bad weather, the navigation ability on sea of these boats was detestable. Bonaparte experienced it July 20, 1804 when he ordered an operation despite Bruix' objections in forecasting a storm. Twelve boats were lost and the sea sent back more than two hundred corpses. This mistake could only justify the apprehensions of the sailors, such as Decrès, Ganteaume and Bruix himself who never believed in the efficiency of the flotilla.
The fore and aft mooring lines had to be given up in the fall of 1804. Docks had to be built, at great cost, to shelter the ships. Five days were then necessary to launch the thousand flat boats packed in the Boulogne harbor, at the rate of two hundred per tide. Without the support of the coastal batteries, the military value of the flotilla still remained illusory, as underlined by Ganteaume.
The flotilla appeared then as a mere instrument of transportation. The way through could only be made during the good season, demanding at least one weak of nice weather. At the end of 1803, Bonaparte had again to admit that the resort to the squadrons was essential. Nelson and Latouche-Tréville came to the same conclusions as soon as 1801.
The problem of a flotilla had already come up in the past and will come up a century and half later. In 1588, even if the Armada had triumphed over the English fleet, it was with much anxiety that the Duke of Albe contemplated to make the army of Flanders cross the Channel, aboard requisitioned barges, of a tonnage of 250 tons. In 1940, even if the Luftwaffe had won air superiority, the admiral Raeder and Hitler himself did not contemplate without deep apprehension the transportation of several divisions with mere flat-bottomed Rhine barges of 1,500 tons, weakly motorized.
At the end, in 1804, the plan of a "raid" was at a dead end. Seeing this situation, some tried to contest the real desire of the State leader to try the landing. This is the thesis brilliantly developed by Alfred de Vigny. For the author of Servitude et grandeur militaire, the gathering of the flotilla and of an imposing army, "the military throne from where fell the first stars of the Legion of Honor, the reviews, the feasts, the partial attacks, this entire splendor reduced, according to the geometrical language, to its simplest expression had three purposes; worrying England, numbing Europe, concentrating and filling the army with enthusiasm. These three points reached, Napoleon let down piece by piece the artificial machine he had played out in Boulogne."
This interpretation cannot be totally dismissed. The Boulogne camp had undoubtedly allowed the Emperor to carry out a psychological objective and to fuse together in one unique body the armies of the Republic, devoted to his person, which each had their own character. It is not excluded that he also tried to alarm the British population like in 1801, and to pressure the British cabinet to open new negotiations. In January 1804, he renewed his proposals of peace. But this kind of manoeuver did not require the building of two thousand flat boats, the improvements of several harbors and the erection of fortifications.

Increase

The will to carry out a raid is therefore undeniable. A decisive element allowed to get out of the dead end and to try an opening move : the entrance of Spain into war against England followed by the naval agreement of January 1805. The assistance of twenty five Spanish vessels added to about fifty large French boats should give, in principle, if not the superiority, at least equality with the allied forces facing a Royal Navy which lined up around seventy five vessels in the European seas. Once more, it was with the help of Spain that the French navy took up again the squadron war and contemplated a landing on England.

Increase

The operation seemed to start under favorable auspices. On March 30, 1805, with eleven vessels, Villeneuve managed to exit Toulon. He crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and then was reinforced April 9 by seven large ships from Gravina. He was able to elude the English watch. Still haunted by Egypt, Nelson took up his position off Sicily, while Admiral Orde in front of Cadix has lost contact. May 15, Villeneuve arrived in the West Indies, without meeting the Rochefort squadron, already back to France. Hearing of the arrival of Nelson at La Barbade and leaving behind his mistake, he cast off for Europe. August 2, after an indecisive engagement with Calder, he laid in at La Corogne. With new instructions, planning a concentration in the Channel, Villeneuve cast off with twenty nine ships. He could not, however, establish contact with the Rochefort squadron. Invoking the poor state of his forces, he gave up making a liaison with Ganteaume in Brest and made the capital decision to rally Cadix where he was almost immediately blocked by the English.
The manoeuver meant to implement a Franco-Spanish concentration at the entrance of the Channel ended in complete failure. There would be no landing in England. For about two centuries, this manoeuver has been the origin of endless controversies. Some saw in it a manifestation of the genius of the Emperor whose failure was only due to Villeneuve's pusillanimity. Others, on the contrary, judged the plan inapplicable by elementary ignorance of sea matters.
In reality, the 1805 manoeuver, like the Egyptian expedition, contained no originality. It followed along the lines of plans at the beginning of the American war, written by Fleurieu, Vergennes or the Duc de Broglie. All these combinations were based upon the dispersion of the English squadrons and on a Franco-Spanish concentration in the Channel. The 1805 manoeuver even had a superiority over previous plans. The concentration concerned 75% of the allied forces instead of 50 %.

The concentration presented, nonetheless, serious deficiencies. First of all, Napoleon did not stop changing his plans in the process of execution with a series of new directives, April 11-14, April 23-29, April 3-May 8, July 16... Most of these directives did not reach the executives on time. The Emperor calculated in a much too optimistic way the march of the frigates in charge of the transmission of his instructions. He counted on crossing the Atlantic in thirty days, whereas it took thirty-five to forty in the best conditions. Even more surprisingly, he also counted on the squadrons to cross the Atlantic in one month, whereas Villeneuve spent fifty-four days to reach La Corogne from the West Indies, and whereas Nelson, having at his disposal a much better trained force, largely exceeded the thirty days from La Barbade to the Channel. Obviously, the naval theater, with its winds and currents, did not suit Napoleon's impatient temper.
At the beginning, it was the Brest squadron, commanded by Ganteaume and composed of twenty one vessels, which had the main role. It would go to the West Indies where it would be joined by the Rochefort and Villeneuve squadrons. In good logic, the concentration would happen at the rear position of the enemy. This plan was modified by the instructions of April 30-May 8. Ganteaume received the order to stay in Brest and Villeneuve was attributed the first role. After reaching the West Indies, he should cross the Atlantic again and rally the naval forces of La Corogne, Rochefort, and Brest. Contrary to a well established rule, the concentration would be made in the heart of the adverse system.
Like all the plans of the American war, the 1805 manoeuver was based on huge misinterpretation. The expected diversion of the squadrons of the Royal Navy did not occur. No reinforcements were sent to the Indian Ocean. Not a single large ship reached the Oriental part of the Mediterranean Sea. Only nine vessels were launched towards the West Indies. On the other hand, during each crisis, April through May with the exit of Villeneuve and July through August with his return to the Spanish coasts, a British concentration occurred.
The orders of the Admiralty, then brilliantly directed by old Lord Barham, eighty-two years old, were strictly obeyed. "In case of uncertainty about the moves of the enemy, everyone should rally under Ouessant, in order to cover the entrance of the Channel. Having decisive superiority there is important, because if the enemy becomes the master of the canal, England is lost."
A misinterpretation worsened further by the undisputable naval gaps of Napoleon. In spite of Decrès' efforts, the Emperor could never admit the particular and unfavorable conditions of the Brest position. Villeneuve could only reach it with a Southwest wind, forbidding the exit of Ganteaume. His exit could only occur thanks to an East wind, which would have pushed Villeneuve offshore. In any case, considering the firmness the British blockade, it was almost impossible to warn Ganteaume in advance of Villeneuve's arrival. Napoleon could not admit the tremendous superiority in manoeuver and tactics of the British squadrons over the allied forces. An English vessel equaled easily two or three large French or Spanish ships. The American war had, too, demonstrated the extreme difficulty of manoeuvering a "combined fleet", without a unique command, without the same signal book, associating vessels with different characteristics. To justify his decision of August 16 to rally Cadix, Villeneuve underlined the poor condition of the Spanish boats which had not sailed for years and which had just been armed with makeshift crews. "The combined fleet" he stressed, "had no cohesion. It was thus impossible in these conditions to fight a general battle in front of Brest... It could only result in disaster, confusion, and a vain demonstration which would have confirmed forever the discredit of the two allied navies."
In the failure of the manoeuver, one cannot deny however the responsibility of the admirals, still filled with discouragement. Ganteaume would have been too pleased to be relieved of his command. Lowered to the level of a mere executer, Decrès was also deeply skeptical about the success of the operation, what's more, in Spring, the Minister of the Navy had the unpleasant surprise to see the whole French plan exposed in some British newspapers, such as the Morning Chronicle on May 9, or the Sun on May 16.
The choice of Villeneuve, proposed by Decrès, was revealed at last harmful. Since the events at Aboukir, the man was said to be "happy". He did not lack in competence and knew his job. At the head of a good squadron, he could have gotten valuable results. But, in 1805, it was necessary to have an improviser, a leader able to yield the best results from deficient materials and crews and not a skeptical, worried and disgruntled man.

By an irony of history, the execution of the 1805 manoeuver had something artificial about it. With the formation of the third coalition including Austria and Russia, it was too late. Even if Villeneuve had made the expected connections, and won a decisive victory off Brest, he could have reached the Channel only at the end of August. At this time, Napoleon had just dictated to Daru the famous plan which would lead to the Ulm victory. He admitted himself that he had to attend "to the most urgent thing first."
At Villeneuve's arrival, the anger of the Emperor was nonetheless terrible and would fall on the whole of the navy. In a series of letters addressed to Decrès from Germany, Napoleon examined all the operations of Villeneuve closely, only to conclude that the man was "a wretch that we have to expel ignominiously. Without device, without courage, without general interest, he would sacrifice everything to save his skin." September 13, with extraordinary nerve, he wrote the last part of the trial : "I wanted to gather forty or fifty vessels for combined operations... and find myself for fifteen days master of the Channel." If Villeneuve had taken the route of Brest, " my army would have landed and England would have succumbed." He wrecked a plan whose success was certain. "The enemy had believed that I planned to ram through, with the sole force of the flotilla. The idea of my real plan did not occur to them." Memoires obviously meant for posterity and to fix in minds the myth of the genial leader betrayed by his subordinates. During the following weeks, new instructions descended. The squadron had to cast off in Cadix, reach the coasts of the Kingdom of Naples, and land its troops. Napoleon wanted to punish Queen Marie-Caroline, the "rascal", guilty of having adhered to the coalition. He also wanted, as Decrès underlined to Villeneuve, to force the fleet to act. "He wants to reach this circumspection she reproaches to her navy, this defensive system that kills the squadron and overtakes the enemy's. This is what her majesty wants ; she counts as nothing the loss of her vessels, if she loses them in glory : she does not want her squadrons to be blocked by an inferior enemy and if it arrives this way in front of Cadix, she recommends and orders you to not hesitate to attack."
These threatening orders constituted already for Villeneuve a scathing condemnation of his behavior. To this insult were added the violent reproaches of the Emperor that Decrès had to transmit and tried to tone down. In the same way, the Emperor waited as long as possible to announce to Villeneuve that he had been replaced by Admiral de Rosily. The miserable Villeneuve learned of it by public rumor.

Increase

Cut to the quick, Villeneuve gave then, without any strategic reason, the battle he refused in August off Brest. It was with dark irony that he declared to Decrès, September 28 : "If it requires only character and audacity, I think I can assure your Excellence that the present mission will be crowned with brilliant success."
A favorable opportunity seemed to occur October 20. The blockade squadron of Nelson has been reduced by six large vessels for a convoy mission. With thirty-three vessels, Villeneuve should be able to face twenty-six. More or less put in line, the combined fleet underwent the shock the day after, off the Cape of Trafalgar. Inspired by the example of Duncan at Camperdown, Nelson attacked in two parallels and dislocated the center and the rear of the Franco-Spanish force. One could perceive once more the gang of brothers. The allied vessels are assailed by groups of three or four English ships whose fire proved devastating. Even though Nelson was fatally wounded on board the Victory, the decision was acquired in less than five hours. It was a disaster for the combined fleet. One vessel exploded, seventeen were captured, eleven boats more or less damaged tried with difficulty to reach Cadix. Already ancient causes were at the origins of this disaster. First, the terrible superiority of the British fire. The English casualties amounted to only four hundred and two dead and one thousand hundred thirty-nine wounded, whereas the Franco-Spanish losses numbered two thousand one hundred seventy seven dead and four thousand seven hundred wounded. The solidarity of the British captains was always opposed to a lack of cohesion of the allied forces. "The observation squadron" of Gravina which should have stayed in the center only congested the rear and played only a passive role during the battle. As for the vanguard of Dumanoir, it engaged itself timidly and extracted itself quickly, which did not prevent it, November 3, to be fully destroyed off the Ortegal cape.

Increase

The failure of the 1805 manoeuver and the tragic conclusion of Trafalgar had tremendous repercussions for history, to the point that many other similar attempts were forgotten. A few times, the French navy alone, or in liaison with the Spanish naval forces, had prepared landings in England. All these attempts had failed. One cannot help but observe here that the incompetence of Napoleon has nothing to envy from his predecessors, Seignelay, Pontchartrain, Choiseul, de Broglie or Fleurieu, and that the timorous behavior of Villeneuve had many examples in the past.

It is enough to recall that in 1692 the landing in England had to be cancelled after the defeat of Tourville in Barfleur and the disaster in The Hague. In 1696, a new attempt had to be abandoned because of an insufficient concentration in the Channel. In 1759, in the midst of the Seven Years War, the Choiseul plan collapsed after the defeat of the Toulon squadron at Lagos and the defeat of Brest in Les Cardinaux. France and Spain were not luckier during the American war. In 1779, the combined squadron of d'Orvilliers and Cordova had to give up penetrating the Channel, the victim of a terrible epidemic. Another attempt failed because of the lack of determination of Guichen and Cordova. The indirect strategy implemented in the North and Baltic Seas by Napoleon also had a precedent with a first League of Neutrals led in 1780 by the Netherlands, exasperated with the inspections of their merchant ships made by the Royal Navy. The problem was solved the following year with the defeat inflicted by Parker on the Dutch fleet at Dogger Bank. The Egyptian expedition had, as well, a precedent in the Ireland events of 1690 with the defeat of the task force of La Boyne.

Increase

From Vauban to Dönitz, the war against commerce did not provide an answer to an irritating question : how to defeat England. In the meantime, after 1805, as we can later observe with Hitler, the answer seems to depend on the domination of the continent.
Philippe Masson is an associate professor, Doctor of French and member of the Marine Academy. Head of the Historical Section of the Historical Service of the Navy, former teacher at the École de Guerre Navale and at the Institut Catholique, his abundant works, of the first rank, focused in particular on the reasoned study of the great conflicts, have an international audience. De la mer et de sa stratégie has become a classic in which he analyzes the war under the perspective of the fight between land and sea. It is in this kind of war that Napoleon, and Hitler (considered as leaders of war), will be defeated because of their lack of naval mastery.