The Rest Is History - 243. Trafalgar: A World at War

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Was the Battle of Trafalgar the most decisive battle of the 19th century? Join Tom and Dominic as they embark on a three part series discussing this incredible conflict between the British Royal Navy and combined fleets of the French and Spanish navies, focusing in this episode on the distrust of standing armies vs the Royal Navy, advanced technology used for the first time during Trafalgar, and the martyr-like status of Horatio Nelson, who led the British to victory.  To get the two remaining episodes of the Trafalgar trilogy right now, just become a member of The Rest Is History Club - you'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Come, cheer up, my lads. Tis to glory we steer,

to add something more to this wonderful year. To honour we call you, as free men, not slaves. For who are so free as the sons of the waves? Heart of ochre are ships, jolly tars are our men. We always are ready, steadyady, boys, steady. We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again. We ne'er see our foes, but we wish them to stay. They never see us, but they wish us away.

If they run, why, we follow and run them ashore. For if they won't fight us, what can we do more? So Tom Holland, that's Heart of Oak, written in 1759 after the Battle of Quiberon Bay and sung a few hours aboard the Victory before the Great Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. So one of the great anthems of the Royal Navy. And you have wanted to do a podcast about Trafalgar since we started The Rest is History, haven't you? I have. And this is the perfect week to be doing it because Friday, the 21st of October, is Trafalgar Day,

the day on which the battle was actually fought. So we were originally going to do one episode, weren't we? We were. On Trafalgar. And I went away on holiday and I started reading about it and I read about it

and I read about it and I read about it and I sent you a text saying, I think we should do two episodes. Well, we're now going to be doing three episodes so we're going to talk about today a world at war the the background to this great battle Napoleon against Nelson France against Britain the elephant against the whale this great clash next time we will look at the build-up to the battle and then on friday the 21st of october trafalgar day we will look at the actual battle itself and

um dominic i have gone on record haven't i as saying that i'm not particularly interested in rope or ships or mizzen masks or anything like that right because this is in the context of the novels of patrick o'brien that refused to read. I now want to recant. I want to recant. Oh, what a moment. I think this is an absolutely thrilling story. I think it's the great epic of British history, actually. And when I say epic, I mean in the sense that, the Homeric sense. Nelson is a kind of a disinfigure, endlessly sweeping the seas.

He's on the sea at two years at a time. And then at Trafalgar, the Byron called him Britannia's god of war. He's a kind of great agent of annihilation, a kind of terrifying figure really, who dies at the moment of his triumph, becomes the great martyr of the Navy. Well, that obviously, we'll come to that. But that martyrdom is absolutely central to the story. It's an astonishing story. And it's a story in which the stakes could not be higher. For Britain, it's about national survival. And for France, it's about the opportunity to knock Britain out permanently, and thereby secure a permanent French supremacy

over Europe. So huge, huge stakes. But there is a debate about Trafalgar, and how decisive it actually is. So there are historians who say it didn't really change anything particularly. What's your view on that? Because I actually think that it's probably the most decisive battle of the 19th century for reasons that we'll come to in due course. Yeah, I probably agree with you, Tom. I think there are some battles that do feel like decisive showdowns or turning points. So, I mean, naval battles, you know, the Battle of Actium maybe, or the Battle of Midway or something. And I think Trafalgar is obviously in the very top rank of those. Because I think what it does, I mean, we'll come on to talk about the geopolitical ramifications later. But I think what Trafalgar does is it ultimately,

you could argue, it makes it impossible for the French to win, to knock Britain out of the Napoleonic Wars. Had Trafalgar gone otherwise, had the French landed in Britain, and maybe not invaded, but maybe smashed up Britain's dockyards, smashed up London and so on, made it impossible for Britain to continue to fight at sea. That would have had enormous ramifications for the war in Europe, but also in the long term, over the course of the 19th century, for the imperial balance of power. And I would say Trafalgar ensures that Britain will be the world's largest commercial and imperial power for the next hundred years or so. Absolutely. And I think there's a paradox

there, which is that perhaps it's less decisive as a battle in the Napoleonic Wars than it is as a battle in the broad context of the 19th century, which is kind of a seeming paradox that perhaps we can look at when we actually come to the battle itself but just to um just to jump in though tom i agree with you about the homeric epic and i think the the fact that the the figure at the center of the of the struggle i mean it's that strange thing isn't it where one there are two figures who everybody knows nelson and napoleon napoleon is never there but he hangs his shadow hangs over the whole story but nelson is there in a very intimate kind of way on the deck of the victory risking his life and of course it a very intimate kind of way on the deck of the victory, risking his life. And of course, it's the fact that he dies in the moment of apotheosis

that turns this into more than just an ordinary battle. It turns it into an absolute, I hate to use the word because it's such a terrible cliche, but it turns it into, dare I say, an iconic moment in British national history. But there's one other thing I think makes Trafalgar so interesting. And I know at this point, you'll roll your eyes because you're terrified that I'm going to start talking about 17th century finance. But I think Trafalgar is the culmination of all kinds of political, financial, economic, cultural processes that have been working themselves out for more than 100 years. And it's a brilliant window, actually, into talking about Britain as a state since its creation. Absolutely. Well, so Andrew Lambert, great naval historian, biographer of Nelson,

describes the Royal Navy as the most successful fighting service the world had ever seen. Adam Nicholson, who wrote a brilliant book, Men of Honour, about Trafalgar, calls it the most effective maritime killing machine in the world. And I think that the Royal Navy obviously lies at the heart of the story. And as you say, I think we're so familiar with the idea of Britannia ruling the waves, the idea that Britain was a naval power, that it's good to look at how that came about, because actually, there was nothing inevitable about it for centuries and centuries. Britain did not rule the waves. I mean, it was hopeless when it came to kind of controlling its own waters, let alone the waters of Europe and the world beyond. And the story of how that happens is obviously an absolutely fundamental part of Trafalgar and indeed the french and spanish fleets that fight on the other side of trafalgar

we should just set the scene in the geopolitics of what's going on in so 1805 is the year i suppose it ranks like 1588 the year of the spanish armada uh 1940 the year of the battle of britain as a year when britain faces invasion by a foreign force. The question of how credible a threat that actually was is something that we'll come to in due course. But that is part of the mythology, isn't it? That 1805, Napoleon could have invaded Britain. Yeah, absolutely. So to give people a sense of the sort of the lie of the land,

Britain and France have fought something like seven major wars, think since the 1690s or so yeah so in france they call it the second hundred years war so yeah the first hundred years war in the middle ages but this is a kind of ongoing process of conflicts that just run and run and run and they are increasingly aren't they world wars so there are wars that take place in multiple theaters you know thousands of miles apart and very often very largely kind of i mean there's there are elements that take place in multiple theatres, you know, thousands of miles apart, and often very largely kind of, I mean, there are elements on land, but the Navy is always hugely important. And this is the latest one, and it's been raging since the early 1790s.

It's sort of off and on. There are sort of stop-starts, but I think you can see it all as one kind of continuous campaign, ultimately, can't you? And Britain is constantly trying to enlist, to do what it's always done, to try and enlist continental coalitions against Napoleon. Because one of the strange things about Britain is Britain is a world power, but militarily on land, it is not really much of a, yeah, it is a pygmy.

Because for reasons we'll go on to discuss, Britain has always invested in its navy rather than its army. So that means Britain needs allies, but it also needs to uphold its side of the bargain, which is to kind of maintain its naval supremacy. Napoleon, so he faces the same strategic dilemma that successive French administrations have faced. They've always struggled to raise enough money to fight on land and at sea. So France is always ending these wars, whatever the result of the war, France is always ending these wars bankrupt. But Napoleon, because he's ruthless, he's rapacious, he plunders countries he occupies,

he poses a kind of threat to Britain, I would say, Tom, that no previous French administration has ever posed. Don't you, wouldn't you agree? This is a kind of an existential challenge on a scale that goes beyond the challenges of, I don't know, well, certainly the Nine Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, or some of these previous conflicts. Absolutely. Because what, and it's not just Napoleon, it's the Revolutionary Wars as well. What the French Revolution does is to put the whole of the French patrie into arms. So it's this idea of total war is born with the French Revolution. And it takes the British, I think, a few years to appreciate what they're up against. I mean, it takes all the kind of ancien regime nations of Europe time to realize what has been born in France.

And also quickly, a quick point, Tom, a really important point. France is a leviathan. Much larger population, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's got something like 27 million people. Britain's got about 11, is it? 11 million. Yeah. So, I mean, now we think of France and Britain as equivalent.

They are not equivalent in population. And, you know, obviously that suggests an economic potential at the dawn of the 19th century. So for Britain, this is something of an uphill struggle. Yes. So Britain, when the Revolutionary Wars break out in 1793, does what Britain has always done throughout the 18th century, which is essentially to pay continental allies to take on the French army. And it, you know, it's kind of diplomacy. It's, you know, all those board games where you have different players and you're all kind of teaming up with one another and stabbing each other in the back. Britain's always been

very good at that. But the problem is, is that the sheer scale of the armies that the French revolutionary state can command are so enormous and the passions that have been unleashed are so intense that they kind of sweep away the Austrians and the Prussians and everybody. And Britain finds herself to her consternation, basically facing a continent where there are no allies to be had. And so therefore, her only option if she is to train her independence is to rely on the Navy and to basically hope that something will turn up process of wars throughout the 1790s culminating the peace of amiens in 1801 but everyone knows this is basically kind of half time isn't it yeah and britain's sense that france now under napoleon is too restless too dangerous too much of a threat is focused by the refusal of

britain to return the island of malta that napole seized from the Knights of Malta, this kind of ancient chivalric order. The British had then taken in turn. And under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, Britain was going to return, you know, it was going to give Malta up. But she refuses to do that because by now, Britain's naval power means that it's not just enough to have forces in the Channel or even the Atlantic, but has to be in the Mediterranean as well. And so therefore, they're not going to do it. And that is what precipitates the return to war. Britain under the governance of Pitt, Pitt the Younger, who's Prime Minister, he is returning to a kind of more traditional British policy. He is trying to get Austria, Russia on board. Napoleon realises that he can knock Austria or Russia out easily. He has

the manpower to do that. He has the manpower to do that. He has the military genius to do that. He has the resources to do that. But that if he's going to win the war, he has to knock Britain out. And so that by 1805 is the situation. That is the strategic decision that Napoleon has arrived at, that he has to get troops across the channel to Britain. And that is essentially the state of play. And it's Napoleon himself who comes up with this phrase, describing the war between France and Britain as the war between an elephant and a whale. But of course, another very, very popular analogy is the war between Rome, the military power, and Carthage, this commercial mercantilist naval power

that ends up being defeated. Well, Napoleon's already modelling himself on a Roman emperor, isn't he? Yes. He's got all the trappings. Well, he is an emperor, isn't he? He's previously been the first consul and now he's the emperor. Exactly. So that suits him. So just on Napoleon and his strategy, people often think, don't they,

that in 1805 the French were poised to invade Britain. And there's this sort of image, you know. I mean, actually, we did a podcast, Tom, very recently, which I recommend to the listeners, about a history of France in 10 films with Muriel Zaga, who was brilliant. And at the beginning of that podcast, I quoted from Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey in the film Master and Commander. And he says, do you want a guillotine and Piccadilly?

Do you want to have that raggedy arse Napoleon as your king? And all this stuff. That probably wouldn't have happened though, would it? Do you think? That's not really Napoleon's plan. I think, don't you think Napoleon's plan is just to cripple Britain as a naval rival, to smash up its dockyards, all that stuff?

That's what Napoleon says. And that's what his marshals in later years say the plan was, that it wasn't to occupy britain it was to destroy its naval resources and that is due trip you know that reflects the fact that napoleon understands that what enables britain to withstand him is the incredible resources that over the course of 150 years the royal navy has built up and has made the royal navy into into this kind of this killing machine a force that is something by the standards of the age something new i mean um something radical lethal and and potentially globes straddling yes absolutely absolutely

france cannot afford to invest in the fleet and this to the same degree that britain does because it has obviously land borders that britain you know Britain, it's now the United Kingdom of Great Britain, doesn't have. So the French have to invest in their military. The British, as you've said, they don't have armed forces that are capable of facing up to this. They've periodically kind of land troops in the Netherlands or whatever, and they get beaten out. And so that means that the Royal Navy is the only possible way that Britain can continue fighting. And that's what makes it so significant. So I completely agree that we cannot begin to look or explain the Battle of Trafalgar without looking at the Royal Navy and the deep history that has led us to this context in 1805, where it is a maritime killing force of an order that has never existed

before now i know you have you're very very excited about tracing the origins of this back to back to cromwell and peeps yeah so so you sent me a whole load of notes it's full of stuff about the battle of lowestoft against the dutch in the 1660s these are complete lies i don't know what the battle of lowestoft is but. Dominic, I would say that actually the origins of Britain's identification with the Royal Navy goes back even beyond Cromwell. It goes back to Drake.

Not to Alfred the Great, Tom. No, not to Alfred the Great, although I'm sure we'll touch on that as well. But it's this idea that kind of exists inchoately in the British imagination. I should probably say the English imagination because, of course, Drake was an English admiral.

But it was Protestant ships that had enabled England under Queen Elizabeth to defy continental and Catholic despotism. And so the Navy is seen as being the embodiment of Protestant liberty against the shadow of continental autocracy. And it's pretty easy when you have that in your imaginings to see to pay for it. Lots of people in Parliament know nothing about the Navy, but they know they're vaguely in favour of it because it's Protestant and it's the embodiment of liberty. Unlike armies, which are seen as being sinister, continental, despotic. Exactly. There is a profound distrust in British and indeed English and Scottish before that history of the idea of a standing army controlled by the king, because that is perceived as the tool of Catholic absolutist monarchs. Whereas there's this perception that runs right through the 18th century, that a navy almost inherently, and the Royal Navy par excellence epitomizes this,

a navy is the sort of bulwark of liberty that free thinking protestant men will serve on ships whereas if they're wearing you know the uniforms of a land army they are merely the slaves of a despot and i mean people absolutely you see that in cartoons you see that as we'll come on to in songs in popular culture i mean the navy is embedded in in britain's sense of its own identity you could argue tom we'll come on to this again as well that the Navy is embedded in Britain's sense of its own identity. You could argue, Tom, we'll come on to this as well, that the Navy is more than anything else, the British institution, because it's obviously it's great rise really coincides with the invention of Great Britain as a sovereign country. But I think you could go even further than that

and say that in a way, the Royal Navy isn't just a reflection of modern Britain. It helps to create it. Yeah, agreed. Because the simple fact, it's unbelievably expensive. So it's equivalent to about a third of the British government's total annual expenditure. I mean, that is an enormous amount of money. And to raise that money, you need the kind of the frameworks of fiscal responsibility that the current British government stands heir to.

So I found it quite depressing reading about, you know, how in the 18th century... You don't trust Liz Truss with the Royal Navy, Tom? You know, the national debt and the kind of the tools of borrowing and lending

that the British state creates. And which essentially provide the kind of the tools of borrowing and lending that the British state creates, and which essentially provide the kind of, you know, the foundations for the entire global economic system to this day. Well, quasi-quarting, if you're listening, please start taking notes now. But the need to fund the Navy is a crucial part of what enables those kind of frameworks to exist. So that's why in some ways the Battle of Trafalgar is the culmination of a story that is a story not just about, you know, sailors fighting at sea.

It's a story about finance and it's a story about the invention of a modern state. Modern state, yes. Now, we should probably take a break, shouldn't we, Tom? And then come back and talk a little bit more about the Navy.

Because I have some very interesting naval facts for you, which I think... I can't wait. I know you'll find that very exciting. So we shall see you with our naval facts after you, which I think I can't wait. I think you'll find that very exciting. So we shall see you with our naval facts after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard

Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom Holland, do you know the origins of the phrase a slush fund? Do you have a slush fund personally um i do because you told me about it yesterday but i i will pretend that i don't know dominic tell me what the origins of the phrase slush fund so a a cook on board a royal navy ship he's he's basically a boiling um salted meat that they've got this disgusting sounding salted meat and as the water boils the fat separates from the meat,

and it forms this sort of layer of scum. The cook would ladle that layer off, the scum, and he would put it, I don't know, in a bucket or something, and people called it slush. It was useful because it's fat, so they can use it for waterproofing ropes, and they can make candles from it, and the cook is allowed to sell it um privately and make money from it's one of the perks of being a ship's cook and that therefore is called his slush fund

and i think we use that phrase all the time we don't know where it comes from and actually you know what there are tons of phrases that are like this so i read a book called empire of the deep by ben wilson all about the raw navy and he has this wonderful section where he talks about, you know, obviously there are some that are very obvious. So, Tom, on this podcast, sometimes you are all at sea. Sometimes I have to say you're sailing very close to the wind. I'm worried, obviously, that you'll walk out and leave me high and dry. But if you don't, then it'll just be plain sailing.

And there are some guests to whom we would give a wide berth. There are some guests for whom we'd push the boat out. There are some loose cannons. Yeah, there are some guests to whom we would give a wide berth there are some guests for whom we'd push the boat out that's our loose cannons yeah there are some loose cannons sometimes we have to press gang them into appearing on the rest of history sometimes we have to give them a shot across the bows we do sometimes you're in full flow and i have to take the wind out of your sails or tell me to pipe down i tell you to pipe down, exactly. So you pipe, don't you? If people, you give an order for men to calm down through the pipes. I mean, some people would say we're just sitting here chewing the fat, Tom. Okay, so what, Dominic, what is the cut of your jib? That's a navel, isn't it?

Yeah. So a jib is a, as a some form, I think it's some sort of sail. I mean, basically, I think it's fair to say some listeners regular listeners will remember that we did a podcast about the portuguese age of exploration and our explanation for portuguese naval technology was they had was it triangular sails was that the yes so but i think what all this tells you and the fact that there are so many of these things so learning the ropes hand over fist hard and fast well okay so learning the ropes dominic yeah learning the right i've gone on record i'm not interested in rope and i remain uninterested in rope and yeah that is uh it doesn't

matter i don't need to know about ropes but the point is is that british midshipmen did they did so it had become a very professional service and the contrast you'll be delighted to hear is with the french the french in the french navy they weren't interested in learning the ropes that was seen as the class a yeah they were interested they were interested in learning abstract principles i saw that and you i saw that in your notes that they were the french were only only interested in abstract nouns very like today yes. Yes, I thought you'd enjoy that. Whereas British officers, even if they were quite well born, so one of the sons of George III went to sea as a midshipman. Yes. So where does this come from, Tom? Because the thing is, you mentioned

Drake, but even in the generation after Drake, England is not really a naval power at all. And actually, I would say, well, I say this because i've read other people's books would you say that yeah this is what your research has led you to my close expertise on the subject and my knowledge of triangular sails says to me that actually the real turning point is that it's the middle of the 17th century it's actually the interregnum so it's the the cromwellian period and it's competition it's competition specifically with the dutch so what actually happens and this is a very simplistic way of doing it of describing it and sort of naval historians may be tearing their hair out is that in a way britain keeps losing england keeps losing battles sea battles to the dutch but in the long run it kind of wins the

competition because all the time it is losing the the Royal Navy is improving, is modernizing, is learning from its opponents. So by the 1660, when you have the restoration, it is already much larger. Cromwell has spent an awful lot of money on the Navy in this sort of competition for trade with Britain's great Protestant commercial rival, which is the Dutch Republic. It has two admirals in particular, Blake and Monk, who are very much into kind of, we need to be more disciplined. It can't be the sort of shambles that it has been for most of our history. And the government is prepared to finance that. And that continues. So it's a great example, actually, the continuity between the Cromwellian period and the restoration, because that continues under Charles II. And James II was Lord High Admiral during the Restoration period. He's very much all about the Navy. So they do two things in particular in the Restoration period. So one is you have peeps and administration, so the creation of a kind of bureaucracy. And the other is professionalization. So it's actually under Charles II

that naval lieutenants have to pass an exam. And if you think about the British army, so right into the 19th century, it's still a very amateur way of life where you buy your way in. So in the Navy, Charles II describes the Navy as a trade, very telling word. In other words, it's not. It's something you learn a trade and you have to pass an exam to do it. So it's a professional enterprise. And then when you get to the an exam to do it. So it's a professional enterprise. And then when you get to the end of the 17th century, William of Orange and Mary and Anne, obviously now you're in competition with the French. So rather than the Dutch, you're now facing the French who are a real, they are the superpower. And the only way England and Scotland and then Britain can compete is through finance.

So William brings over these sort of Dutch financial techniques, and now they're being applied on a much grander scale. So the classic one is the Bank of England. The Bank of England is founded in 1694. England is locked in this sort of long struggle against Louis XIV's France. Right away, the Bank of England raises more than a million pounds and an absolutely astronomical sum of money by the standards of the day and more than half of that tom was spent on the royal navy so finance and kind of naval power were absolutely intertwined and in fact even the public are

financing the navy so from 1714 you as an ordinary punter, you as a sort of spec, a small speculator, you can buy a Navy bill, which is traded on the stock exchange, will give you a return of 6% a year. And that presumably is seen as being patriotic, the patriotic option. Absolutely. Absolutely. You think about all the war bonds that, so our American, Australian, Canadian, British listeners, all of these people will remember, in the World Wars, you would buy war bonds to support the war effort. This is exactly what people are doing at the turn of the 18th century, and it is supporting specifically the Navy. So as we enter the 18th century, Britain has a naval bureaucracy. It has the Admiralty Building in Whitehall, offices, people with pieces of paper. And it's also, as time goes on, the Navy becomes absolutely embedded in britain so britain is created in 1707 and the navy is at the center of that because that's all we have we don't

really have an arm i mean i know there's mulberry in the battle of well so regiments are obviously drawn from counties or yeah or regions they're very localized whereas the royal navy people come from all over the place exactly exactly so the anthem the great Navy, people come from all over the place. Exactly. Exactly. So the anthem, the great anthem that people associate with, apart from God Save the King, the anthem that people associate with this new country, Great Britain, is, of course, Rule Britannia. Britannia Rules the Waves. Yeah. Britannia Rule the Waves.

Exactly. Now, that was sung at a, it was a sort of a play, an opera, a masque, a musical about Alfred the Great. Yeah. About Alfred the Great. Who gets kind of, you know, back projected as the founder of the Royal Navy, which of course he wasn't. No, but this idea, that idea is really important.

So in 1740, when the people are watching the Alfred the Great and they're singing Rue Britannia, they are kind of inventing a tradition in which Britain has always been a maritime power and which the Royal Navy of the mid-18th century is sort of being projected as the culmination of a process that has taken almost a thousand years. I mean, we think of the Navy, I guess, because we're living in the sort of shadow of it. You know, we probably think, and many of the listeners will think of the Navy as an incredibly traditional, old-fashioned institution, full of weird rituals and phrases. But in the 18th century,

the Royal Navy, I would say, represents the acme of modernity. Completely. With its bureaucracy, with its finance, all those things. Yes. By 1805, the Royal Navy is, I mean, there hasn't been a kind of dramatic change in the way that there is with, say, with the development of steam power. Techniques for fighting battles are basically the same as they've been pretty much for 150 years. So in that sense, nothing radically has changed. In Victory, there's been 74 gunships, aren't they?

They came in from the 1750s. Yes, but HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, is about 40 years old at the Battle of Trafalgar. And Nelson himself, who becomes a midshipman before the outbreak of the Revolutionary Wars, lots of the admirals who fight in Nelson's Navy, the captains have come of age during the war of American independence. But essentially, the fighting techniques haven't radically altered. Having said that, however, I think that there are two ways in which the Royal Navy is, as you say, the kind of the embodiment of the future. The first is that although the fundamentals of fighting naval battles and fighting naval campaigns have remained the same, decades and decades of having the Royal Navy at the heart of the British state means that the funding, the understanding, the provisioning, the manning of this force has been unbelievably well streamlined. So in contrast, say, to France, which has these periodic bankruptcies,

lacks the kind of bureaucratic infrastructure, lacks the naval dockyards that Britain has. And so it's a much more kind of staccato process. Ships get knocked out, they have to start again almost from scratch. In Britain, there is this kind of continuity of tradition, which means that the putting to sea of ships has become something incredibly fluent. And I think the other thing is that over the course of the decades that precede Trafalgar, in all kinds of ways, everything to do with the Navy has been tightened, has been streamlined, has been made more efficient and in a way trafalgar is the ultimate demonstration of the success of that process well i mean if you think about in the seven years war tom in the seven years war which is a sort of generation or two

earlier they had started to provision ships with fresh vegetables i mean it sounds like such a boring trivial point of course it's not if you're on board the ship. So they are sending not just sort of carrots and beer and cabbages, but they have ships with live cattle on them that they are sending hundreds of miles across the world. And pigs. Yeah, to resupply the fleet. I mean, that is, if you think about the logistical operation, you know, in a world where everything is done on paper and handwritten on paper, just to organize all that to have everything in place at the right time and for the ships to communicate with each

other for them to rendezvous at the right place at the right point that takes an enormous amount of bureaucratic organization when you mention the dockyards the dockyards themselves are like they're like manufacturers aren't they well just to stick to the provisioning and also the cleanliness, because good provisions and washing down the ships are absolutely integrated. A healthy crew on a ship is a well-fed crew. And really, that is a product of the 1780s. So the decade of defeat at the hands of the American rebels. But Britain, the Royal Navy comes out of that with a very, very clear understanding that you win wars by having healthy, well-fed sailors. And so that's when they rumble the fact that if you eat lime, then you won't get scurvy. So after the Battle of Nile, he comes back to Sicily.

He's hanging out with Lady Hamilton, all that kind of stuff. But he's also busy setting up a contract to buy 30,000 gallons of lemon juice a year yeah and in hna4 the year before trafalgar you know the guy who is provisioning his fleet is sourcing food as far away as south russia i can't remember which writer it is i think it might be it might be nelson's amazing biographer john sugden i think it is who says nelson's men at the battle of trafalgar were literally the healthiest britons alive nam roger who's um about the command of, who's a book, The Command of the Ocean, is a brilliant, I mean, it's the definitive history of the emergence of the Royal Navy, and it obviously includes the Nelsonian period. Yeah. And he goes on to say that if you're looking

at the Victorian period, and you want to identify the origins of public health movements, and even the science of epidemiology, then you look at the Royal Navy, because this is where the British state has a stake in developing this. And what Roger also says, fascinatingly, is he casts Britain's dockyards entered the industrial age 100 years before the rest of the country. So that's kind of an amazing idea that Portsmouth and Plymouth and Chatham are these kind of centres for industrialisation long before it's starting to develop elsewhere in Britain, let alone the rest of Europe or the world. When William Pitt the Elder, of course, becomes Earl of Chatham, that's a badge of modernity because of places like Chatham and Portsmouth, certainly by the turn of the 19th century.

I mean, effectively, is it not some people, NAM Roger maybe talks about this as the world's first assembly line? Yeah. So that's a guy called Samuel Bentham. He's appointed the Inspector General of Naval Works in 1796. And he goes in to Portsmouth and he makes it essentially the most industrially sophisticated location in the entire world. So he builds vastly deeper docks that can take bigger ships. He is developing the use of steam engines to drain the docks, to power sawmills and rolling mills and all these kinds of things. And you've got these block mills that are invented by Mark Brunel, who's the father of Isambard, Kingdom Brunel, manufactured by a guy called Henry Maudsley. And amazingly, so these are, I think, by historians of the Industrial Revolution cast as the world's first assembly line of machine tools. And

amazingly, they only stopped working in 1983. So after the Falklands War. That's incredible. Unbelievable. And this is happening at the end of the 18th century. Yeah, in the age of bonnets. And as we discovered in our fashion podcast, the age of the rise of the corset and the trouser, but also of the assembly line. So Tom, the parallel here, right, to sort of widen the picture out,

the parallel here, you would argue, is with the role of the world wars in the 20th century in driving all kinds of development, but also the role, I suppose, of American defense spending in driving the rise of digital technology, the internet, all suppose, of American defence spending in driving the rise of digital technology, the internet, all these kinds of things. Here is a perfect example of military technology driving social, cultural and economic change. Yes, but it's also about very small incremental changes. So British gunnery is not massively, it's not revolutionary. It's not so far ahead, say,

a French or Spanish gunnery has to be on another planet. But there are incremental changes. So there's a company called the Caron Company outside Glasgow that develops these new guns called Caronades, which are very short range. So they can't come across. I'm listening to you talking about gunnery, Tom, man. But so the key there is that you have to get up close. And thanks to British rule in India, they now have access to much better saltpeter, the French or the Spanish have.

So it's about kind of 20% perhaps more efficient. Again, I can't believe I'm coming up with all this stuff. And the relentless emphasis on discipline and practice. Well, that is key. It's the professionalization, isn't it? Because isn't the argument that we are going to get one day to the Battle of Trafalgar itself? But when we do, the key to it is not that the equipment is better

or the ships are better. It is simply that the British, the Royal Navy, the men of the Royal Navy are an incredibly well-trained, professionalized fighting machine in ways that their rivals just aren't. So on a French ship, the average is you can fire one broadside from your cannon every four minutes. On a British ship, the best British ships, the most practised British ships, you can get three broadsides in three minutes.

Three in three minutes? Yeah. So in addition to that, have current so the british have carronades on all their ships the french and spanish don't if you can get your ships up close your guns are better your gunpowder is better and you can fire at a prodigiously faster rate you're going to cause carnage and that is absolutely key to understanding nelson's strategy at trafalgar and indeed more generally is that you get up close and you blast the shit out of your opponents. Right. That's a technical term.

That's a technical, nautical term. Just to leap ahead. I think there's a sense in which people don't appreciate the consequences of all this that you're talking about, Tom. So to give you just a leap ahead to anticipate a second for when we do get to the Battle of Trafalgar. On the day of the battle, the victory, they keep incredibly, I mean, this is a sign of the bureaucratization, they keep incredibly detailed

records. And they record that they fired 4,243 round shot and 371 double-headed and grape shot, and they threw 4,000 musket balls at their opponents. So that's from one ship. So that gives you some sort of sense of just what a colossal enterprise, equipping a ship, equipping it, training the men to do it, and then actually what a horrific enterprise it is

to be out there fighting at close quarters. And to do that, you can only do that if you've got the state machine. So Pitt, that's why Pitt the Younger, I think to my mind, is clearly one of Britain's most effective war leaders and prime ministers in the whole sweep, because he is

brilliant at creating the financial machine through taxation and stuff that will fund this. You used the phrase at the beginning of the podcast, total war. This is the spearhead of Britain's total war. Right. And so the fact that the ships of the Royal Navy are probably the best maintained objects anywhere on the planet, you know, that more care and love and attention is lavished on keeping them spruce, clean, well-equipped than anything comparable anywhere. So these are absolutely key things. But there's also further dimensions, which is strategic and tactical. And i can't believe how much like my my brother i should say you're turning to your brother i'm sounding because

the royal navy hasn't just honed its ability to put these kind of killing machines out onto the waters it's also developed techniques for how to use them to best effect so what they have worked out by basically the 1740s is that they need control of the channel. And that sounds so obvious, but they hadn't kind of worked that out up until the 1740s. Well, Britain had historically been abysmal at controlling the channel. That's why people are always invading and crossing and all this sort of stuff. So by the 1740s, they've developed this thing called the Western Squadron, which is based along

the south coast so portsmouth and plymouth and that enables britain to maintain control not just the channel but if the western approach is into the channel and the great fret you know the french lack deep sea ports along their along their channel coast and basically their naval base breast is around the kind of the headland of of Brittany. So that's a problem for the French. Portsmouth and Plymouth are excellent harbours for them. But what then happens over the course of the 1780s and into the 1790s with the start of the Revolutionary Wars is a further streamlining of their strategic vision. There are really two key figures before Nelson, and nelson is a disciple of both of them his kind

of apprenticeship is served under both of them the first one is a guy called lord hood hood's understanding is that the navy it's not enough just to control the western approaches into the channel the geopolitical context is broader than that and so he serves as commander of a fleet that's based in the mediterranean he seizes control of toulon the great naval base on the on the south of France. And although he gets thrown out of it by Napoleon, it's where the whiff grapeshot, it's where Napoleon first makes his name. It's absolutely devastating for the French because while Hood is there, he destroys all the naval supplies that have been stored up there by French provisioners ready to build ships. And there's a case for saying perhaps that Trafalgar is one

at Toulon when Hood destroys all this stuff. And Hood understands that to be an effective fighting force, the Royal Navy has to exist in the broader geopolitical context. So an admiral has to be a diplomat, has to have this kind of sense that it's not just operating as a naval force, it's operating as a geopolitical force. And Nelson absolutely absorbs that. The other guy who's again a big big influence on nelson is a man called john jervis who wins a great battle at cape st vincent off spain just like trafalgar is in 1797 where nelson boards a ship uh he's a captain well nelson was the first person to have led the first 15 60 or something yeah to have led his men on and that was one of the moments that absolutely turned him we haven't really talked about nelson but turned him into a

national hero yes uh and jervis who later becomes earl saint vincent named after his great victory he's about two things really he's about he's the guy who's really into discipline he's the guy who's who's interested in getting rid of all the kind of the remnants of 18th century corruption, making the Navy discipline streamlined, focused. But he's also about giving his captains a sense of autonomy. That's crucial, isn't it? So what Jervis does is he says to his captains, this is the plan, this is what we're going to do. But I trust you when we get into the battle to know what I would want you to do. And that's what Nelson does. I was reading an article yesterday about the difference

between the Ukrainian and Russian armies. And the author said, the Russian commanders, you know, it's all very top down. They have no initiative, whereas the Ukrainians have a NATO style command system where individual kind of commanders

on the ground, are told the general objective, but they can use their initiative to try and achieve it. And I thought, that's exactly the Royal Navy's position, Nelson's position with his captains at the turn of the 19th century. There's one other thing, actually, which I'm surprised you haven't mentioned, because you would love it. I know you will enjoy talking about it.

So it's about the ethos of aggression. So the British, it seems to me that the Royal Navy has this ethos, a much more aggressive ethos than the French, in particular the Spanish Navy, because their navies exist to protect their colonial trade, particularly Spain. I mean, that's why they have a navy, to protect the great treasure fleets and so on. And the Royal Navy has always cultivated this sort of dash and vigour and aggressiveness.

Well, it hasn't always. Well, as I say, the classic example is Admiral Bing. Because Admiral Bing, in 1756, he had basically abandoned Menorca for not terribly inglorious reasons. He thought it was better to go back to Gibraltar and stuff. And he had famously been court-martialed and executed. Tom, I know you like Voltaire, don't you? You're a big Voltaire fan.

Big Voltaire fan, yeah. And do you want to tell everybody what Voltaire said? Of course you do. Yeah, he says in Condide that the English execute admirals to encourage the others, pour encourager les autres. And this is a kind of throwaway quip, but is that actually true? So NAM Rogers, in his great history, basically says that every British captain goes to see an admiral knowing that if they don't attack, if they're not aggressive, if they don't adopt a

policy of kind of dramatic engagement, they face the risk of being executed on the deck of their own ship. And this encourages a kind of incredible aggression in the Royal Navy that their opponents find increasingly intimidating. And the result is that French and, say, Spanish captains look at the Royal Navy and think if we fight them we're probably going to be defeated it's a kind of implicit defeatism that is the result of decades and decades and decades but gets very much sharpened by both Hood and Jervis because on the tactical level the fact that you have your enemy you're a captain you see an opportunity to attack them you have to go in or else you're going to get executed. I mean, that obviously

sharpens the minds of British captains. But on the broader sense, admirals with entire theatres of war, what's happened by the 1790s with Hood and Jervis is that they are recognising that Britain is involved in this total war. So we began the episode by talking about how it takes the British time to work out that they're in a total war. It's Hood and Jervis who understand that, who recognise that if Britain is going to win, it's not enough just to play a defensive game. They have to go on the attack as well. They have to cripple or hopefully destroy the French Navy. They've got to attack French trade links. They've got to try and do everything that they can to strangle and throttle the French economy. So both on the tactical and strategic

level, the Royal Navy by the age of Nelson is very, very aggressive. And Nelson is the absolute embodiment of that. He is the disciple of both Hood and Jervis, and his career stands as an absolute monument to these traditions of violent aggression and of absolute attention to detail. And those are the qualities that he will bring to the Trafalgar campaign. So Tom, that is a, dare I say, it's the beginning of a tour de force. It's not a tour de force completely, but it's the beginning of a tour de force. Now, if you were a member of the Restless History Club, you're laughing. I mean, you're like a Royal Navy captain sailing into battle against the Spanish. There is a smile on your lips and laughter and death in your heart because you know that you can listen to

the rest of this series right away. If you're not a member of the Restless History Club, then frankly, you're not even a midshipman. What what are you tom i mean you're you're part of the slush fund basically so join the rest is history club this is you know britain was a commercial power in the 18th century it's very important that we celebrate that tom people should join the rest is history club they'll be able to listen to all of this tom holland will be speaking for hours and hours about naval tactics and gunnery i've seen his notes he's got he's ready to go he's going to do it it's not even minute by minute it's practically second by second all sorts of excitement if we're very lucky he might do you might sing who knows so join the

rest is history club forthwith and on that bombshell goodbye bye Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.