e was let fly from her
double-shotted guns, which raked the _Bucentaure_ fore and aft, and
the booming of cannon continued until her masts and hull were a
complete wreck. Many guns were dismounted and four hundred men killed.
The _Victory_ then swung off and left the doomed _Bucentaure_ to be
captured by the _Conqueror_, and Villeneuve was taken prisoner. After
clearing the _Bucentaure_, the _Victory_ fouled the _Redoubtable_, and
proceeded to demolish her hull with the starboard guns, and with her
port guns she battered the _Santissima Trinidad_, until she was a mass
of wreckage, and the _Africa_ and _Neptune_ forced her to surrender.
Meanwhile, the _Victory_ kept hammering with her starboard guns at the
_Redoubtable_ until her lower deck cannon were put out of action. Then
she used her upper deck small guns and muskets from aloft. Nelson was
too humane a man to use this method of warfare from the lower tops,
and too practical, lest the ropes and sails should be damaged. The
writer is of opinion that he was wrong in this view, as was clearly
shown by the deadly execution the French musketeers did from aloft
before their masts were shot away by the British big artillery. It can
never be wrong to outmatch an enemy in the methods they employ, no
matter what form they take. Although the victory was all on the
British side at Trafalgar, it would have been greater and with less
loss of life on our side had musketeers been employed in the same way
as the French and Spanish employed them. The men on the upper deck of
the _Victory_ were shot down by these snipers without having an equal
chance of retaliating. The _Redoubtable's_ mizzen-top was full of
sharpshooters when the two ships fell alongside of each other, but
only two were left there when Nelson was shot and dropped on his left
side on the deck a foot or two from Captain Hardy. The Frenchman who
shot him was killed himself by a shot fired from the _Victory's_ deck,
which knocked his head to pieces. His comrade was also shot dead while
trying to escape down the rigging, and fell on the _Redoubtable's_
poop. The other sharpshooters had been previously killed by the
musketry from the _Victory's_ deck.

Nelson told Hardy, when he expressed the hope that he was not
seriously hurt, that "they had done for him at last, and that he felt
his backbone was broken." He was hit on the left shoulder; the ball
had pierced his left lung. The snipers from the tops of the other
enemy sh