he Nile he crushed
the French Mediterranean Fleet. In a letter to Lord Howe, written
January 8, 1799, he described his plan in a sentence:--

"By attacking the enemy's van and centre, the wind blowing directly
along their line, I was enabled to throw what force I pleased on a few
ships."

We know that Nelson's method of fighting had for months before the
battle been his constant preoccupation, and that he had lost no
opportunity of explaining his ideas to his captains. Here are the words
of Captain Berry's narrative:--

"It had been his practice during the whole of the cruise, whenever the
weather and circumstances would permit, to have his captains on board
the Vanguard, where he would fully develop to them his own ideas of the
different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to
execute upon falling in with the enemy, whatever their position or
situation might be, by day or by night. There was no possible position
in which they might be found that he did not take into his calculation,
and for the most advantageous attack on which he had not digested and
arranged the best possible disposition of the force which he commanded."

The great final victory of Trafalgar was prepared in the same way, and
the various memoranda written in the period before the battle have
revealed to recent investigation the unwearying care which Nelson
devoted to finding out how best to concentrate his force upon that
portion of the enemy's fleet which it would be most difficult for the
enemy to support with the remainder.

Nelson's great merit, his personal contribution to his country's
influence, lay first and foremost in his having by intellectual effort
solved the tactical problem set to commanders by the conditions of the
naval weapon of his day, the fleet of line-of-battle ships; and
secondly, in his being possessed and inspired by the true strategical
doctrine that the prime object of naval warfare is the destruction of
the enemy's fleet, and therefore that the decisive point in the theatre
of war is the point where the enemy's fleet can be found. It was the
conviction with which he held this principle that enabled him in
circumstances of the greatest difficulty to divine where to go to find
the enemy's fleet; which in 1798 led him persistently up and down the
Mediterranean till he had discovered the French squadron anchored at
Aboukir; which in 1805 took him from the Mediterranean to the West
Indies, and from the W