Nelson's famous signal,
"expects every man to do his duty"; and though he fell himself in the
hour of victory, twenty French sail had struck their flag ere the day
was done. The French and Spanish navies were in fact annihilated. From
this hour the supremacy of England at sea remained unquestioned; and the
danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a dream.

[Sidenote: The Peace of Tilsit.]

Her allies were less fortunate. "England has saved herself by her
courage," Pitt said in what were destined to be his last public words:
"she will save Europe by her example!" But even before the victory of
Trafalgar Napoleon had abandoned the dream of invading England to meet
the coalition in his rear; and swinging round his forces on the Danube,
he forced an Austrian army to capitulation in Ulm three days before his
naval defeat. From Ulm he marched on Vienna, and at the close of
November he crushed the combined armies of Austria and Russia in the
battle of Austerlitz. "Austerlitz," Wilberforce wrote in his diary,
"killed Pitt." Though he was still but forty-seven, the hollow voice and
wasted frame of the great Minister had long told that death was near;
and the blow to his hopes proved fatal. "Roll up that map," he said,
pointing to a map of Europe which hung upon the wall; "it will not be
wanted these ten years!" Once only he rallied from stupor; and those
who bent over him caught a faint murmur of "My country! How I leave my
country!" On the twenty-third of January 1806 he breathed his last; and
was laid in Westminster Abbey in the grave of Chatham. "What grave,"
exclaimed Lord Wellesley, "contains such a father and such a son! What
sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory!"
So great was felt to be the loss that nothing but the union of parties,
which Pitt had in vain desired during his lifetime, could fill up the
gap left by his death. In the new ministry Fox, with the small body of
popular Whigs who were bent on peace and internal reform, united with
the aristocratic Whigs under Lord Grenville and with the Tories under
Lord Sidmouth. All home questions, in fact, were subordinated to the
need of saving Europe from the ambition of France, and in the resolve to
save Europe Fox was as resolute as Pitt himself. His hopes of peace
indeed were stronger; but they were foiled by the evasive answer which
Napoleon gave to his overtures, and by a new war which he undertook
against Prussia, the one po