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Updated: June 21, 2025
Every captain is at his post if he is under fire." It was the misfortune of Admiral Villeneuve in the battle of Trafalgar, that he did not adhere to his original instructions. Gravina asked for authority to manoeuvre in an independent manner. Villeneuve objected, and ordered him to place himself in line.
M. de Villeneuve then entered the city after him, and at the Porta del Populo found the ambassadors of the various Powers, and among them those of Spain and Naples, whose sovereigns were not yet, it is true, in declared hostility to France, though there was already some coolness.
The bridge of S. Benezet is broken down and abandoned, but a suspension bridge unites Avignon with the farther bank of the Rhone, and this must be crossed to reach Villeneuve, which stood to Avignon as Beaucaire to Tarascon. Villeneuve was French, and Avignon Papal down to the Revolution, when in 1791 it was annexed to France.
At Trafalgar it was not Villeneuve that failed, but Napoleon that was vanquished; not Nelson that won, but England that was saved; and why? Because Napoleon's combinations failed, and Nelson's intuitions and activity kept the English fleet ever on the track of the enemy, and brought it up in time at the decisive moment.
Unless indeed it be true, as I have heard it maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad every one was mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is not altogether untenable. Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was covered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material.
On the 4th of June the hostile fleets were separated by only a hundred miles of sea; and Villeneuve, when off Antigua, hearing that Nelson was so close, decided forthwith to return to Europe.
There is a large chapel attached, in which there are some pictures, and one bearing the date of 1404 with a handsome monument of the founder. The Egyptian fountain in this street is well worth attention, it was built in 1806, and is a very handsome monument. At No. 104, corner of the Boulevards, is the convent of the Dames de St. Thomas de Villeneuve, with a very pretty little gothic chapel.
Last June, when he expected a probable junction of the fleet under Villeneuve with the squadron under Admiral Winter, and the union of both with Ganteaume at Brest, Murat was to have had the chief command of the united French, Spanish, and Batavian fleets, and to support the landing of our troops in your country; but the arrival of Lord Nelson in the West Indies, and the victory of Admiral Calder, deranged all our plans and postponed all our designs, which the Continental war has interrupted; to be commenced, God knows when.
Arnand de Villeneuve was the inventor of it, and the produce of his Still appeared so marvellous, that it was named Aqua-Vitæ, or Water of Life, and has ever since continued under that denomination in France; Voltaire and reason say that it might, with far more propriety, be called Aqua-Mortis, or Water of Death.
Driven to desperation by the goadings of Napoleon and the news that Admiral Rosily was approaching to supersede him, Villeneuve at last resolved to put to sea.
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