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Updated: June 21, 2025
During the same hours the untrained squadron of Villeneuve was losing topmasts in the fury of the gale. The following afternoon, as the British drew out from under the lee of Sardinia, they found the wind blowing a hard gale from south-southwest, which lasted all that night.
He himself meanwhile marched toward the Loire to meet the Dauphin, and took Beaugency; then, returning northward, first reduced Villeneuve on the Yonne, and afterward laid siege to Meaux on the Marne. The latter place held out for seven months, and while Henry lay before it he received intelligence that his Queen had borne him a son at Windsor, who was christened Henry.
In this gigantic war game, where the Atlantic was the chess-board, and the prize a world-empire, the chances were at this time curiously even. Fortune had favoured Villeneuve but checked Gantheaume.
He believed, for a short space, that the flotilla could fight sea-going ships out at sea: the converse was proved up to the hilt. Finally, he trusted that Villeneuve, when burdened with Spanish ships, would outwit and outmanoeuvre Nelson! What then remained after these and many other disappointments?
Thus, when Villeneuve neared the north-west of Spain, his twenty ships of the line were confronted by a force which he could neither overwhelm nor shake off.
This morning, after breakfast, J and I crossed the suspension-bridge close by the gate nearest our hotel, and walked to the ancient town of Villeneuve, on the other side of the Rhone. The first bridge leads to an island, from the farther side of which another very long one, with a timber foundation, accomplishes the passage of the other branch of the Rhone.
Two days after, he breakfasted at Glatigny with Lanoë, leaving there his boots, overcoat, and the yellow horse, and started gaily for Falaise, where he arrived in the evening. He saw Mme. Acquet on the 7th, and found her completely at her ease. When Lanoë had abandoned her at the farm of Villeneuve, twelve days before, Mme.
He therefore trusted that, in the spirit of his orders to Villeneuve dated July the 26th, that admiral would sail to Cadiz, gather up other French and Spanish ships, and return to Ferrol and Brest with a mighty force of some sixty sail of the line: "I count on your zeal for my service, on your love for the fatherland, on your hatred of this Power which for forty generations has oppressed us, and which a little daring and perseverance on your part will for ever reduce to the rank of the small Powers: 150,000 soldiers ... and the crews complete are embarked on 2,000 craft of the flotilla, which, despite the English cruisers, forms a long line of broadsides from Etaples to Cape Grisnez.
Nelson first covered the channel between Sardinia and Barbary, so as to satisfy himself that Villeneuve was not taking the same route for Egypt which Gantheaume had taken before him, when he attempted to carry reinforcements thither. Certain of this, he bore up on the 7th for Palermo, lest the French should pass to the north of Corsica, and he despatched cruisers in all directions.
It was a creeping nightmare to him which was only relieved by his resolute opinion that his fame and the terror of his name had caused Villeneuve to fly from inevitable destruction. The idea of strategy did not enter into his calculations.
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