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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Sire," responded Bruix with respectful firmness, "a terrible storm is gathering. Your Majesty can see this as well as I; are you willing to uselessly risk the lives of so many brave men?" In truth, the heaviness of the atmosphere, and the low rumbling which could be heard in the distance, justified only too well the admiral's fears.
"Bruix is a very able man!" said Bonaparte, who judged men as much by little as by great things. "And above all very cautious, general!" said Talleyrand. "Yes. We will need a corkscrew to pull anything out of him." "Oh, no; on the contrary, now that he has joined us, he, will broach the question frankly."
Admiral Bruix looked after him with an aggrieved air, and then turned also around in order to go.
His wish was communicated to Admiral Bruix, who responded with imperturbable coolness that he was very sorry, but that the review could not take place that day. Consequently not a vessel was moved. On his return back from his ride the Emperor asked whether all was ready. He was told what the Admiral had said.
"As for you, sir," said the Emperor, fixing his eyes on Admiral Bruix, you leave Boulogne within twenty-four hours and depart for Holland. Go!" M. Magon ordered the fatal movement of the fleet on which the Emperor had insisted. The first arrangements had scarcely been made when the sea because very high.
For Napoleon's best admirals, "who knew the craft of the sea," the British fleet thus disposed was in a state of concentration that nothing but a stroke of luck beyond the limit of sober calculation could break. Decrès and Bruix had no doubt of it, and the knowledge overpowered Villeneuve when the crisis came.
When he thus wrote, Nelson knew that Bruix had joined the Spanish fleet in Cartagena, making a combined force of forty ships, to which Keith, after stripping Minorca, could oppose thirty-one.
He walked slowly forward, his face immutable, his eyes fixed steadily before him, measured, inexorable, the very personification of Destiny. 'Admiral Bruix! I do not know if that voice thrilled through every one as it did through me. Never had I heard anything more harsh, more menacing, more sinister.
He obeyed instantly; but the Emperor, thinking he did not come quickly enough, met him half-way from his barracks. The staff followed his Majesty, and placed themselves silently around him, while his eyes shot lightning. "Admiral Bruix," said the Emperor in a tone showing great excitement, "why have you not obeyed my orders?"
All the hurrying about, the brief notes which I had to write to many friends, and the conversations in which I was compelled to take part, prevented me from dining before one o'clock in the morning. It was not till then that Bonaparte, having gone to take the oath as Consul before the Five Hundred, afforded me an opportunity of taking some refreshment with Admires Bruix and some other officers.
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