d sweep, a great fleet of at least sixteen
sail of the line, past the Scilly Islands to Boulogne. Napoleon
calculated that Nelson would be racing in the direction of Egypt,
Cornwallis would be redoubling his vigilance before Brest, at the exact
moment the great Boulogne flotilla was carrying its 130,000 invading
Frenchmen to Dover! Napoleon put the one French admiral as to whose
resolve and daring he was sure--Latouche Treville--in command of the
Toulon fleet; but before the moment for action came Treville died, and
Napoleon had to fall back upon a weaker man, Villeneuve.

He changed his plans to suit the qualities of his new admiral--the
Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to break out, sail separately to a
rendezvous in the West Indies, and, once joined, spread havoc through
the British possessions there. "I think," wrote Napoleon, "that the
sailing of these twenty ships of the line will oblige the English to
despatch over thirty in pursuit." So the blockades everywhere would be
weakened, and the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, doubling back to
Europe, were to raise the blockade off Ferrol and Brest, and the Brest
squadron was to land 18,000 troops, under Augereau, in Ireland, while
the Grand Army of Boulogne was to cross the Straits, with Napoleon at
its head. Thus Great Britain and Ireland would be invaded
simultaneously.

The trouble was to set the scheme going by the release of the Toulon
and Rochefort squadrons. Nelson's correspondence shows that he guessed
Napoleon's strategy. If the Toulon fleet broke loose, he wrote, he was
sure its course would be held for the Atlantic, and thither he would
follow it. In the meanwhile he kept guard so steadfastly that the
great French strategy could not get itself started. In December 1804
war broke out betwixt Britain and Spain, and this gave Napoleon a new
ally and a new fleet. Napoleon found he had nearly sixty
line-of-battle ships, French or Spanish, to weave into his
combinations, and he framed--to use Mahan's words--"upon lines equal,
both in boldness and scope, to those of the Marengo and Austerlitz
campaigns, the immense strategy which resulted in Trafalgar." The
Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, as before, were to break out
separately, rendezvous in the West Indies, return by a different route
to European waters, pick up the French and Spanish ships in Ferrol, and
then sweep through the narrow seas.

The Rochefort squadron duly escaped; Villeneuve, too, i