, and to Hanover
embarrassed rather than materially assisted the cause of her allies. But
her navy, favourably handicapped by the breakdown, due to the
Revolution, of the French navy, eventually produced in the person of
Nelson a leader who, like Napoleon, had made it the business of his life
to understand the art of war. His victories, like Napoleon's, were
decisive, and when he fell at Trafalgar the navies of continental
Europe, which one after another had been pressed into the service of
France, had all been destroyed.

Then were revealed the prodigious consequences of complete victory at
sea, which were more immediate, more decisive, more far-reaching, more
irrevocable than on land. The sea became during the continuance of the
war the territory of Great Britain, the open highway along which her
ships could pass, while it was closed to the ships of her adversaries.
Across that secure sea a small army was sent to Spain to assist the
national and heroic, though miserably organised, resistance made by the
Spanish people against the French attempt at conquest. The British
Government had at last found the right direction for such military force
as it possessed. Sir John Moore's army brought Napoleon with a great
force into the field, but it was able to retire to its own territory,
the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had
to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the
Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington,
marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the
general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the
strength of the force which he commanded or of that which directly
opposed him.

While France was engaged in her great continental struggle England was
reaping, all over the world, the fruits of her naval victories. Of the
colonies of her enemies she took as many as she wanted, though at the
peace she returned most of them to their former owners. Of the world's
trade she obtained something like a monopoly. The nineteenth century saw
the British colonies grow up into so many nations and the British
administration of India become a great empire. These developments are
now seen to have been possible only through the security due to the fact
that Great Britain, during the first half of the nineteenth century, had
the only navy worth considering in the world, and that during the second
half its strength greatly pr