et there was
none wherein the lessons of experience needed so carefully to be laid
to heart.

Fortune seemed to frown on Napoleon's naval schemes: yet she was
perhaps not unkind in thwarting them in their first stages. Events
occurred which early suggested a deviation from the combinations
noticed above. In the last days of 1803, hearing that the English
were about to attack Martinique, he at once wrote to Gantheaume,
urging him to despatch the Toulon squadron under Admiral
Latouche-Treville for the rescue of this important island. The
commander of the troops, Cervoni, was to be told that the expedition
aimed at the Morea, so that spies might report this news to Nelson,
and it is clear from our admiral's despatches that the ruse half
succeeded. Distracted, however, by the thought that the French might,
after all, aim at Ireland, Nelson clung to the vicinity of Toulon, and
his untiring zeal kept in harbour the most daring admiral in the French
navy, who, despite his advanced age, excited an enthusiasm that none
other could arouse.

To him, in spite of his present ill-fortune, Napoleon intrusted the
execution of a scheme bearing date July 2nd, 1804. Latouche was
ordered speedily to put to sea with his ten ships of the line and four
frigates, to rally a French warship then at Cadiz, release the five
ships of the line and four frigates blockaded at Rochefort by
Collingwood, and then sweep the Channel and convoy the flotilla across
the straits. This has been pronounced by Jurien de la Graviere the
best of all Napoleon's plans: it exposed ships that had long been in
harbour only to a short ocean voyage, and it was free from the
complexity of the later and more grandiose schemes.

But fate interposed and carried off the intrepid commander by that
worst of all deaths for a brave seaman, death by disease in harbour,
where he was shut up by his country's foes (August 20th).

Villeneuve was thereupon appointed to succeed him, while Missiessy
held command at Rochefort. The choice of Villeneuve has always been
considered strange; and the riddle is not solved by the declaration of
Napoleon that he considered that Villeneuve at the Nile showed his
_good fortune_ in escaping with the only French ships which survived
that disaster. A strange reason this: to appoint an admiral commander
of an expedition that was to change the face of the world because his
good fortune consisted in escaping from Nelson![325]

Napoleon now began to