The Rest Is History - 244. Trafalgar: Countdown to Annihilation

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

In the second episode of Tom and Dominic's Trafalgar trilogy, the stakes could not be higher. They discuss: Napoleon's plan to invade Britain (and the possible repercussions if he did); what developments in naval technology meant for the British and Spanish/French allies; and Nelson's own life, legacy, and strategy to "annihilate the enemy". To get the final episode 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. Trouble sleeping? It's something of a tradition, Guinan.

Captain touring the ship before a battle. Hmm. Before a hopeless battle, if I remember the tradition correctly. Not necessarily. Nelson toured the HMS Victory before Trafalgar. Yes, but Nelson never returned from Trafalgar, did he? No, but the battle was won. That, Dominic, was Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan

and Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek The Next Generation. If you had given me a thousand guesses, I would not have guessed that one of those people was whoopi goldberg it was so uh that is uh from the episode the best of both worlds which sees the um the enterprise facing its deadliest enemy yet the borg um and uh jean-luc picard is supposedly um french but is he he drinks he drinks earl grey tea uh he loves shakespeare and uh facing a hopeless battle here he conjures up nelson so good for him i think he's very english frenchman um anyway so that is my way of introducing today's episode, which I'm hoping, Dominic, will take us to the eve of the battle. So just like Jean-Luc Picard is waiting to take on the Borg, we will end up with Nelson waiting to take on the French and Spanish fleets off the Cape of Trafalgar.

Brilliant analogy, Tom. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Fantastic podcasting. Well, you love a popular culture reference i mean i know you because you think it's too earnest but um i do but um yeah fine i applaud your use of um popular culture use of star trek yeah exactly so last time we talked about the deep background of the battle of trafalgar the geopolitical position we talked about the institutional history of the Royal Navy, the way in which the Navy was the reflection of financial, political, economic forces that had been gathering strength in Britain, I suppose, since the 1650s or the 1690s or the 1740s,

or you choose your date. 1580s. But now, yeah, Isaiah, you were wittering about Alfred the Great, I'm sure, at some point. But listen, we should now, Tom, enter the 19th century. Yes. You want to talk a little bit about the characters to you, and particularly Nelson. Do you want to start with Nelson? Well, I thought it would make sense to talk about who is fighting in the battle. So we've got, obviously, the admirals, the captains, the men on both sides.

And Trafalgar is really synonymous with Nelson because it's his strategy, it's his tactics that results in the victory. And of course, because he dies in the battle. We're on a patriotic streak at the moment, aren't we? We've celebrated British fashion in the Regency period. We did three episodes on Churchill and now we're doing Trafalgar. Where do you think Nelson stands in the pantheon of British heroes? Oh, he's obviously in the top rank, in the very top rank. I mean, he has his column. If you've got a column, if you're a column, you're a top hero, aren't you?

There has been, I think, a reasonably sort of fruitless attempt to cancel him. I mean, people don't try to cancel you unless you are somebody. But, I mean, a completely failed campaign, not even a campaign really, just to sort of cancel him, which never got anywhere. Nelson, I think to most ordinary Britons, I mean, when they had the Great Britons competition at the beginning of the 21st century, Nelson was in the top 10.

I think to most ordinary Britons, Nelson is one of the four or five people who is synonymous with britishness with british heroism so he's up there with the only people who rival him tom i would say in the public imagination i'm talking about people who are not interested in history are churchill i suppose elizabeth the first you know possibly alfred but maybe alfred but i mean nelson is more famous than alfred i would say yes i think so I suppose, Elizabeth I, you know. Possibly Alfred. Maybe Alfred. But I mean, Elston is more famous than Alfred, I would say. Yes, I think so.

Wouldn't you? Yes. I mean, I think he's become a slightly distant figure. He's up there on his column. People don't really study the Napoleonic Wars in detail. I mean, we at school, we were close in Salisbury, we were close enough to Portsmouth that once a year we'd go to HMS Victory. I read quite a lot about him when I was a child and I found him a heroic figure. I mean,

I think he is a heroic figure. He's very, very, I mean, unbelievably physically brave. And he has the slightly chilling quality of a hero. In the first episode, we talked about him as a kind of epic. He's a kind of weird Christian Achilles might be the best way to sum him up. I mean, he's the son of a very conservative Tory clergyman. He's very, very ideologically opposed to the Jacobinism, the anti-monarchism, the republicanism of his French adversaries. He sees himself absolutely as engaged, I think, in a kind of apocalyptic battle against the French republicanism. He's a kind of weird mix of absolute attention to detail.

So we talked about that in the first episode, how important that is to the success of the Navy. So right the way through his career, he keeps a weather log. he keeps a weather log on the last you know the day he dies 21st of october 1805 and he's done that throughout his entire career and it's that that enables him to have this absolutely kind of pinpoint ability to judge the waves the winds everything that that an admiral needs to to properly read um the the

surface on which he's going to fight. But at the same time, he has this kind of strange visionary quality. So when he's 17, he goes to Central America and he gets malaria, he's recovering from it, and he feels incredibly depressed about how little he's done, even though he's aged 17 at the time. But, you know, anyone who's been 17 is perhaps aware of that kind of... And he said, I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition after a long and gloomy reverie in which I almost wished myself overboard. A sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me and presented my king and country as my patron. My mind exulted in the idea. Well then,

I exclaimed, I will be a hero. And confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger. Well, that combination of the patriotism and Providence is absolutely key to his character, isn't it, Tom? Yes, I think he literally has this kind of, he feels possessed by a kind of prophetic, a visionary fire. And that is what people respond to. People love him. Yes, but his captains adore him and he is a i mean so all of that makes him sound a bit of a monster because somebody who has that prophetic fire and all that stuff you know they can be quite as you said a terrifying figure but the interesting thing with him is he is

i mean sometimes you know there's all the you know we could do a restless history tips for american business leaders flying from cincinnati to Houston, and they don't have anything to read, and the kind of book that would be available in the airport. Well, actually, the management techniques of Horatio Nelson would be a reasonable, because he's a brilliant manager of his staff, of his underlings, isn't he? Because he gets on fantastically well with his captains. Basically, to work with Nelson was to adore him.

That's what essentially everybody says. There are his peers who find him insufferable, who think he's bumptious. So a bit like with Churchill, a bit like with the young Churchill. They think he's a medal hunter. They think he's fame hungry. They think he's annoying and whingy and difficult and all those things. But the people who work for him worship him, don't they? Completely. and all those things. But the people who work for him worship him, don't they? Completely, because his charisma, his courage,

but also the way that he obviously loves his captains and loves his men. So Adam Nicholson, who wrote a brilliant book, Men of Honour, about Trafalgar, says that the people Nelson loved, apart, of course, from Emma Hamilton, his mistress, were his captains. And I think that that sense of a band of brothers,

you know, the great speech of Henry V, which Nelson knew off by heart, that sense that to be with Nelson was to be taking part in a great heroic epic, it absolutely animates both Nelson himself, but all his captains and the men who serve under the captains not least tom because he he because he's aware of the media you know this is an age of a media range he's a media star yes uh he he casts himself just as churchill would later do he casts himself as a kind of melodramatic hero, doesn't he?

He plays up to the crowds. He plays up to the newspapers and the gossip columnists, as it were. And he communicates to the people around him. We're not just sailing off to fight the French in a sort of bog standard battle. You are characters in this, what you called a Homeric epic. And people love to be told that. And his captains love that. The men love that, don't they?

I mean, I think it works on two levels. So there is the sense that Nelson himself would never ask his men to do something that he wouldn't do. So there's the famous response when he has his arm amputated after an abortive attack on Tenerife. And he's asked, you know, how are your spirits? And he replies, never better. And that's the kind of quality of sang- fit, to ensure that they're healthy. It's not just about so that they can go out and kill the French,

although that is absolutely a part of it, but it's also because he passionately cares about their health. And so Captain Hardy, so Nelson is the Admiral on the victory, Hardy is the captain, the flag captain, and of course famously ends up kissing Nelson as he's dying. He says of Nelson that it was not a foolish passion for fighting, for he was the most gentle of all human creatures and often lamented the cruel necessity of it. But it was a principle of duty, which all men owed their country in defense of her laws and liberty. That sense that he's simultaneously unbelievably ferocious, but also very gentle.

And that's something that you get with other captains as well so um probably uh aside from nelson the most celebrated um admiral in the napoleonic wars is cuthbert cullingwood who is a big big uh hero for uh dan jackson from newcastle uh newcastle man yes so he's called cuthbert his brother is called Wilfred so clearly drawing on the names of the great Northumbrian saints and and they were friends from young men they served together in their early years in the navy and both Nelson and Collingwood adored animals so Nelson was very very keen on on animals Collingwood famously had a dog called Bounce which he kept with him on his ship um and And when Nelson arrived at Trafalgar to consult with Collingwood,

Bounce was there on the ship with him. He loves animals. He's charismatic. He kills the French. He behaves like a film star. He cares for people. This is a kind of package that people can really respond to. There's a wonderful moment, Tom.

I know you have a horror of this franchise franchise but in the film master and commander i love the master and commander russell crowe's character is asked they're all sitting he's with he's got the midshipmen who are the the young boys who are kind of training to be officers um around him one of them says did you ever meet lord nelson sir and he says at one point i had that honor i had that honor yeah I had that honor. He makes a joke about Nelson asking him to pass the salt. But then, and they all laugh. And then he says, the thing that sticks in his mind is that somebody offered Nelson a coat because it was cold.

And Nelson said, I don't need a coat because my love of king and country keep me warm. And Russell Crowe's character, Captain Aubrey, says, from anybody else you would say this was pretty poor stuff, but when it came from Nelson, you knew he meant it. And there's just a silence in the cabin. It's a wonderful scene. And actually what that captures was exactly what people did feel about Nelson, that he would come out with these kind of what you might say are hallmark sentiments about king and country,

but he said it with such charisma and passion and much as i suppose you would say churchill did in 1940 that people would be wiping away people like tom holland would be wiping away manly tears of uh of patriotic passion tom say something negative about nelson so that people listen to this podcast won't lambast us for being um is there is there any counter argument to all this? Or do you think he's beyond counter-arguments? Do you know, emotionally, I do feel that. I think because he was a kind of childhood hero

and the emotions one feels as a child are much harder to kind of purge often. I feel much more strongly about Nelson than I do about, say, Churchill. I don't really care about Churchillill what people say about churchill right but i suppose one would say about nelson is that um he spends a lot of time in the caribbean uh as as we will come on to this he does in the last year of his life as we'll come to discuss he he was very hostile to abolitionism um he wasn't an admirer of wilberforce at no point does he express any anxiety about the source of britain's wealth that is extracting from the caribbean so i think that that is uh something to be that that in the 21st century would be marked down against him just as

in the 19th century in the victorian period his relationship with emma hamilton yeah so he does have a pretty rackety love life i I think it's fair to say. He does. So he marries actually the daughter of a planter. And she doesn't really measure up to Nelson's sense of what the wife of a hero should be like. Whereas Emma Hamilton, who's this extraordinary woman, who is the wife of the British ambassador to Naples,

who becomes embroiled with Nelson, both romantically and all kinds of wars and shenanigans and rebellions that are going on in Southern Italy at the time, and ends up living with Nelson in Merton. And this is seen by the Victorians as being a great black mark against him. I think less so by his contemporaries, actually. I think that was seen as, I i mean this was the age of the prince regent um the man who'll become william the fourth and mrs jordan so this is kind of much more powerful the cause but you know he has his insecurities he he's he's a driven man and he is the great object in his life is is essentially to kill and destroy as many of the enemy as possible.

I mean, as I say, there is a strong element of the Achilles within him. He's extraordinarily aggressive, isn't he? So very famously, you mentioned in the last episode, Capes and Vincent. That's the one where he had led his men in a boarding party, the first British captain to do this, the English captain since the 16th century, onto the San Nicola. He had led them brilliantly with the war cry, Westminster Abbey or glorious victory, i.e. death or victory. But I mean, you can imagine if you've got a captain who is leading you, shouting that, waving his gun or his cutlass or whatever,

you just think, fantastic, don't you? I mean, you can see why the men would respond to that. Yes. And what's interesting about the fleet at Trafalgar is that actually, although Nelson's very keen on the idea of the Band of Brothers, he doesn't know huge amounts of the people who end up serving with him at Trafalgar. But in the very few, you know, the brief space of time that he is there, he forges them again into this kind of collective force that is able to brave incredible dangers. We'll come on to discuss. And we talked in the first episode how the Royal Navy is perhaps the preeminent British institution. So I think a third of the sailors

at Trafalgar come from Ireland. You have about 1500 are born outside Britain and Ireland uh you've got I've got figures here got 373 from the US 136 from Italy uh amazingly you've got 57 from France I guess they're kind of royalists um famously you have 18 from Africa so one of them is shown on the um the frieze uh at the base of Nelson's column. Yeah, we talked about that in our statues episode, didn't we? Yes, yeah. A man called George Ryan, who was 23 at the Battle of Trafalgar. And Nelson gets all of them behind him, I think.

So I think that's the measure of nelson now his opponent at trafalgar a less impressive figure i think it's fair to say but a man who is he has a hard gig he's got a huge name tom i mean say that for you do you want to give us the name well his name is pierre charles jean baptiste sylvester villeneuve but it would be even longer if you hadn't dropped the de. So it was de Villeneuve. So he's an aristocrat, Tom, isn't he? Yes. Now, has he sold out or is he just patriotic and he's doing his best for France, despite the fact that there's a Republican regime

or what's going on with Villeneuve? So the French Navy before the revolution is a very aristocratic institution. And that's the contrast with the British system. And when the French revolution happens, basically, the entire command structure gets eliminated. And this is why the French Navy is in a terrible state throughout the early Revolutionary Wars. And it's obviously brilliant for the Royal Navy. It's a massive contrib this hasn't been entirely helpful and so uh to an extent there's a kind of amnesty offered to royalist officers um i think villeneuve is a as a patriot uh he recognizes that um you know the king is gone he wants to serve france i mean he really is unbelievably aristocrat so he um he was a knight of malta he'd had an ancestor who'd

fought at the Battle of Roncesvalles, the Song of Roland, Charlemagne and all that, an ancestor who fought in the Crusades. And he's probably in 1805, the most effective admiral that Napoleon has, but that doesn't make him very effective. He's run up nelson at uh the battle of the nile and he escaped that so he's he's he's stared into the whites of uh nelson's eyes so the battle of the nile for people who don't know that was when napoleon had gone over to egypt um nelson had kind of caught up with him and fought this tremendous battle cornering the French, and had basically broken Napoleon's attempt to take Egypt as the sort of gateway to India and so on. And is that right, Tom?

Yes. And the Battle of the Nile is a classic example of Nelsonian aggression. So he turns up with his fleet late in the afternoon. He doesn't pause. He just sails straight in around the back of the French fleet, even though the waters are very shallow and it's a very risky maneuver. And he blasts them out of the water. And this is Nelson's first great battle of annihilation. He destroys two ships, he captures nine. And that is far more than anyone has done in any engagement with the French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. And it kind of sets a precedent that at Trafalgar, he's consciously trying to exceed that. He's consciously trying to practice a battle of annihilation against the French. And Will knows this. And essentially, he's been broken at the Nile

and he's been broken by the displays of British naval supremacy. And so he writes to a friend of his, Denis Decret, who is essentially the Minister for Naval Affairs, who had also been at the Battle of the Nile. And he writes to him in 1805, it is utterly impossible for us to defeat the enemy when both sides are equal. Indeed, they will beat us when they are a third weaker than we are. And that may sound like defeatism, or you may say that that's realism. But Villeneuve is is you know he's not possessed of the the swagger and the confidence certainly that Nelson is bringing to the table nor it has to be said are the Spanish who are Spanish are much more they're much more old-fashioned navy that's fair to say isn't it they're an ancient regime navy

not modernized not professionalized to anything like the same degree? Well, not entirely. So the Spanish fleet, obviously, you know, it has that great tradition of seafaring going back to the 16th century. And control of the Atlantic is crucial to the Spanish empire, but it gets destroyed in the 18th century. And then in the decades that follow that, so building up to the time of Trafalgar, there's been a concentrated attempt by the Spanish government to reinvest in the fleet. Because they recognize that without that, Spain has no pretensions whatsoever to being a great power. So in the 1720s, there's a naval minister called the Comte de Maripaz. And he says trade generates the wealth, consequently the power of states.

Navies are absolutely necessary to sustain seaborne trade. But Tom, you know what Nelson said of the Spanish? I do. The dons may make fine ships. They cannot, however, make men. But there, he's not saying that, you know, he's not kind of saying they're not men, that they're, you know, they're cowards who run away. It's literally a comment about the demographics. And one of the problems that Spain faces that France and Britain doesn't is that Spain has reimported diseases from the Caribbean and the New World.

So yellow fever is raging, say, in Cádiz in southern Spain in 1805. And that has a terrible kind of knock-on effect on the ability of Spain to man its ships. So the French high command is defeatist. The Spanish high command is aware that it lacks the manpower in a battle and is very, very ambivalent about siding with France. I mean, essentially, it's kind's torn between French bullying and British bullying. Spain had fought against Britain in the early stages of the war. 1801, the Treaty of Amiens, the war ends, doesn't re-enter the war when Britain and France resume the war. But then in 1804, they do re-enter the war. The reason for that is that there is a Spanish

treasure fleet and the British attack it. And on board the treasure fleet, there are also lots of women and civilians, and a lot of them get killed in the engagement. And this is widely seen across Europe as a war crime. And it means that the Spanish essentially have no alternative but to reenter the war. But they're still very reluctant. There is still quite an Anglophile strain within the Spanish high command. And crucially, for the campaign that starts to develop in 1805, the Spanish are not going to allow their ships to join the French and go into the Channel. So the Spanish have not told the French that, but the Spanish high command have been told by the government, you are not to go with the French.

So essentially, that's the state of play with the commanders and the men. And I think after the break, we should come back and we should look at how this plays out in the build-up to the actual Battle of Trafalgar. So finally, Tom, an hour and a half into this epic, we're approaching, well, we're approaching 1805. Anyway, I won't say we're approaching Trafalgar. So finally, Tom, an hour and a half into this epic. We're approaching, well, we're approaching 1805. Anyway, I won't say we're approaching Trafalgar because I don't want to get people's hopes up. But if you come back after the break, we'll at least be in the

right year. So we'll see you then. Bye bye. 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. So, know you have been you've spent the break i've watched you you've spent the break interfering with your colossal pile of notes i i hope i'm not drawing back the veil too much to say that i mean you've done colossal amounts of reading as you've told the listeners yeah i just want that on the. So you're absolutely poised to give us a masterly strategic overview of the course of the war up to the Battle of Trafalgar. So Tom, where are we and what is going on? Well, people who remember the beginning of our first episode. Six hours ago. We talked about Napoleon's plans to invade Britain. This is the context. He has built up an enormous force

on the North French coast, centered around Boulogne. He needs to get it across the Channel. And to do that, he needs to beat off the British fleet. So he needs essentially to take control of the Channel only for a very short space of time. His plan for doing this is to repeat on the scale of the Atlantic what he conventionally does in land battles, which is to create feints and to distract the enemy so that they're looking one way and then he strikes in. He has various fleets that are kind of bottled up by British blockades. of French and Spanish ports that contain ships that if they can be brought together will create a concentrated fleet that potentially will have the chance to outnumber the British fleet in the channel. So in total, Spanish and French, they've got about 100 ships, I think about 100 ships at the line. Yeah. And so these ports are, you've got Boulogne, the British fleet under a guy called Keith, Admiral Keith. So that's blockaded. You have Brest in just kind of southern side of the tip of Brittany, which is blockaded. You have the port of Rochefort lower down. You have Ferrol in northern Spain. You have Cadiz in southern Spain, just above Trafalgar, just above Gibraltar, which is occupied by Britain. And then you have Toulon, which is the great naval base in the south of France, which is blockaded by Nelson. Napoleon's plan is that

the force in Toulon, which is commanded by Villeneuve, will slip out, give Nelson the slip, sail out through the Straits of Gibraltar, and head out to the Caribbean. And the Caribbean is so economically important to Britain. It's, you know, the center of sugar and tobacco and cotton, and of course, of slaves. I mean, slaves themselves are incredibly valuable property. And that will drag Nelson out, is the plan. But the Atlantic is so huge that Villeneuve will meet with forces that have come from Rochefort and from the Spanish ports. And they will then move up into the channel. So they'll double back. They'll double back.

And Nelson will have no idea what's going on because the vastness of the Atlantic means it's very difficult to keep track of it. So that is the plan. It's an incredibly complicated plan. And I think it reflects the fact that napoleon has never actually commanded at sea because he's assuming that all the things that can go wrong all the rendezvous that will be missed storms all yes exactly so it's a very very complicated plan but but this is what his his aim is let's say the plan works so villeneuve and the spanish they double back they get back they relieve brest they they join up with the rest and the Spanish they double back, they get back they relieve Brest

they join up with the rest of the fleet they go to Boulogne, they get the troops how many troops are there? 150,000? 100,000? Something like that and then they ferry them, they manage to break Admiral Keith, get the men across the channel and then their plan, we were talking about this in episode one, their plan is

really it's destruction rather than occupation. Yes, it's to destroy the underpinnings of British naval power. So to destroy the bases at Portsmouth and Plymouth and up the Thames Estuary. And to some listeners, that will be like, well, who cares? It's just a raid on a few bases. But to give people a sense of the stakes, if that plan had worked, Britain would have been unable effectively to compete yeah in the napoleon

because we have no really sizable army it would have destroyed the british empire yeah it would have massively inhibited the industrial revolution well britain would have lost all its colonies conceivably certainly it's caribbean it's prized caribbean colonies the french would have been able to blockade us you know starve us out or whatever i mean in the long run the success of that Napoleonic enterprise probably would mean the diminution of Britain as a world power with enormous consequences going into the 19th century. Yes. So the stakes are very, very high. That's what makes this kind of incredible chess game that starts to evolve in the early months of 1805 so significant.

So what happens is that Villeneuve gets his orders from Napoleon in early January. Off you go. So he sets off on the 18th of January and he's taking his 11 battleships with him. He's got 6,000 troops. So like the Romans, it's this idea that, you know, you're going to fight land battles at sea.

You pack your ships with troops because that hopefully can kind of counterbalance British command of gunnery. Nelson realises that Villeneuve has gone and panics, immediately thinks of India because that's what had happened before when Napoleon had slipped out from Toulon and ended up in Egypt. So Nelson goes herring off to Alexandria. Meanwhile, Villeneuve has been beaten back into Toulon by a storm. So he's holed up in Toulon. He sets off again in March. By the 9th of April, he has reached Gibraltar. Meanwhile, Nelson is herring back from Alexandria because he's discovered the French have not got there. And on the 16th of April, he is told that Villeneuve has already passed through

the Straits of Gibraltar. And he feels terrible feels terrible it was his job to stop this happening and he's failed and he doesn't know where villeneuve is going is villeneuve going to to ireland always a possibility the french could ferment a you know a new rebellion in ireland and that would be disastrous for britain once again if he goes to the channel that's bad if he goes to the carib that's bad. If he goes to the Caribbean, that's probably the worst case scenario in some sense, isn't it? Because the colonies are so important economically. Yes. And Nelson has to kind of take a punt. Where am I going to go? And where might he have gone? And he's so anxious by it that he's kind of prostrated. He becomes ill with anxiety. By early May, it's become clear to him from various reports have come back to him

that Villeneuve is indeed heading for the Caribbean. British ships are much faster because they're much more effective at kind of clearing all the rubbish off the base of the ships. The barnacles. The barnacles. And so he goes speeding off to the West Indies

and he arrives there shortly after Villeneuve has arrived. But Villeneuve has, first of all, failed to complete the rendezvous with the other ships. I warned him a few sentences ago. Absolutely. And also, when he knows that Nelson is on his heels, he gets thrown into a panic and flees. And he doesn't really commit you know

he doesn't succeed in capturing kingston or uh antigua or whatever right and so he he heads back across the atlantic nelson has failed to corner villeneuve so he's disappointed about that but he's he he you know he's he's starting to get his confidence back. So he writes and says, I have saved these colonies and more than 200 sail of sugar-loaded ships. So he recognizes he is fighting for the sugar barons as well as for Britain. I mean, Britain can't fight the war without the money from this stuff. So he's in the Caribbean. Villeneuve is heading back across the Atlantic. By this point, everybody else is back in port um and the the british blockades have resumed outside breast

outside rochefort outside farol and outside it is the only pieces that are really kind of moving on the the great atlantic chessboard are nelson and villeneuve um what are they going to do villeneuve heads back to uh to farol um and the a his his the plan is that he will go to farol he will pick up the spanish ships there uh he will then join the french squadron from rochefort and he will head north to the channel those are the orders that he has from Napoleon. All kinds of things prevent him from doing that. The first is that although Villeneuve doesn't know it, the Spanish have been told not to go to the channel. So there's no way the Spanish are going to accompany him. He's then sailing northwards. He runs into a British fleet under a guy called Sir Robert Calder. uh there is a battle calder fails

to destroy vilna's fleet so it's an indecisive battle and in due course calder will be pilloried for this rather like admiral bing he will it will be seen that he's been insufficiently aggressive but vilna is unsettled by this he starts to think without the i can't take the spanish with me because by now he's kind of realized the spanish aren't going to come with him he thinks that there are huge squadrons of british ships kind of between him and the channel and that they will have the beating of him and he thinks the best thing to do therefore is not to risk the french navy but to try and get back to a safe port and so he heads south down the coast of spain and he heads towards cadiz cadiz is blocked by cuthbert collingwood this very very yeah nelson's old mate

owner of bounce the dog very very tough character uh in body and mind he was iron and very cold iron but he doesn't have many shit he only has about three ships and so the risk for collingwood is that as villeneuve is coming down the coast he might get trapped between those ships that are already in um in french ships that are already in cadiz and spanish ships that are in cadiz and villeneuve's force so he retreats um he summons back more ships and he kind of hovers around on the horizon not wanting the french to know how few ships he has but the blockade continues and villeneuve ends up in cadiz and villeneuve has 33 ships or so he has yes 33 ships and napoleon feels that this is enough if he picks up more ships from from rochefort

and breast why shouldn't he come up the channel yeah it's more than enough i think napoleon is being over optimistic well napoleon is furious and he furious. And he condemns Villeneuve as a coward. And essentially it persuades Napoleon to give up on the entire plan. And by this point, Pitt has been maneuvering. He's got Austria and Russia back into the war. And so Napoleon decides, well, I'm not going to hang around

gazing across the straits at the Cliffs of Dover. There's no point. I'm going to go off and fight the Battle of Austerlitz. So that's what he does. He goes herring off to fight war in Central Europe. And the threat of invasion is passed. Meanwhile, Nelson has crossed back across the Atlantic. He's landed at Gibraltar.

He steps on land for the first time in two years. He's been at ship for two years yeah that i mean it's extraordinary to think of what that must be like imagine the wobbling as you walk on that kind of swaying so he he decides he's going to go back to london uh get his orders and and discuss what what should be done and so he he heads back to london in london waiting for him is lady hamilton in their house. Everybody knows, everybody knows that they are lovers and they've got this incredibly

scandalous relationship. Yes. And he, they have a house in Merton in South, in what is now Southwest London, but at the time was a village. It's on the main road between London and Portsmouth. So very convenient for Nelson to,

to go to Portsmouth if summoned, but also to go into London, to talk to the Admiralty or to Downing Street or whatever. Emma Hamilton has been busy making it a place fit for Nelson. So she is by the Wandel, which is one of the rivers. Nelson fishes on the Wandel when he's at home. He's got a moat, hasn't he? Yes, that they call the Nile. The whole house is an absolute shrine to Nelson and Emma. I wish I had a house like that.

Yeah. Absolutely brilliant. And very sadly, it was demolished in 1823. But people who visit it, there's an entrance to the Grand Drive that's marked by a pub called the Nelson Arms. Oh, that's nice. Even though, of course, Nelson only had one arm. I'd give the pub so much credit if they'd rename it the Nelson Arm.

Yeah, that would be great, wouldn't it? Anyway, so Nelson's there, but he's going in and out of London. He's absolute hero of the hour. And so someone says, wherever Nelson goes, the air rings with huzzahs. Wouldn't you love that dominic i mean i never go out so a friend of his describes it's really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration and love and respect of the whole world and the general expression of all these sentiments at once from the gentle and simple the moment he has seen it is beyond anything

represented in a play or a poem of fame tom that's what happens when you walk into the room at a rest is history club get together yeah but i i think i like you know i lack this homeric quality and it's again it's that idea that it's this idea that nelson is is already the hero of a poem or a play yeah and he's consciously playing that role. He is England's lion. That's the whole point. Well, even the people at the top think that, Tom, because the crowds think it and they love to see him and they cheer him. But when he goes to London, Pitt the Younger, William Pitt, he pays homage to Nelson, doesn't he?

He walks with him to his carriage. Yeah, when he goes for the last time when he's leaving so so and that reflects the fact that nelson has been in discussion with pitt with the admiralty and walking around his garden in merton uh doing his fishing and uh admiring all the busts of him that emma has put up everywhere he is plotting what his strategy should be because what he wants to do is is to do what he did at the Nile, which is to pursue a battle of annihilation. But he wants to pursue it even more aggressively than he'd done at the Nile. Because Nelson recognises, as the Admiralty do, as Pitt recognises, that if the British can destroy the French and Spanish navies, then Britain will not

only, you know, it'll be impossible for the French to invade, but Britain can also seize French and Spanish trade, take it over. And by doing that, impoverish them and then prevent them from ever kind of developing fleets on the scale that the British have. Well, you can blockade them in Europe. You can starve them of imports. You can destroy their trade. It will take time, but you know that you will win that war. I mean, it will take years, but you can do it. His plan is to annihilate the enemy. And he's able to do that because even taking the number of ships that he does,

that's only a fraction of the total British force. So he can afford to take a risk and he can afford to lose British lives. Actually, the number of British casualties are not going to be important if you're pursuing a battle of annihilation. What matters is that the battle causes as much destruction as possible to the enemy. And his plan for doing that, Tom, just to give people a sort of sneak preview, he wants to get right up close. He wants to take his ships and pierce you know because we haven't talked about naval battles and there's a sort of slightly ritualistic element isn't there to 18th century naval battles the two sides kind of line up and shoot at each other effectively yeah and what nelson wants to do is he wants to head straight for the enemy pierce their

line in two places and and get really close. What he calls, he says, they will not know what I'm about. It will bring forward a pell-mell battle, and that is what I want. I mean, what he wants is the carnage, the chaos, the close quarters fighting to be sort of turned up to the absolute maximum because he is confident that the superior British discipline, the gunnery and all that kind of thing, that when they're up close, he thinks there's no way really he can lose.

That's pretty much it, isn't it? Yeah. So I think the plan is operating on two levels. The first is, as we discussed in the first episode, that British gunnery is so superior and is so effective at close quarters that if they can get right up close, so basically, you know, the British guns are aimed straight at the French or Spanish guns, the impact of that will be absolutely devastating on the enemy ships. But it's also, I think, to create chaos. The naval battles fought in the, you know, from the 17th through the 18th centuries are designed to impose a kind of patterning on the chaos of naval battles. It's like the kind of dances that you get in Jane Austen films.

People line up and fire, and then they kind of withdraw. It's kind of minuet. Nelson wants to rip that up, and he wants to create chaos. He wants to operate at the edge of what is possible for the British fleet to operate in the full confidence that that will destroy the Spanish and French because they will lack the professionalism to cope with that. When he's drawing up his plan, he has a friend, Captain Richard Keats, one of his captains, to come and stroll in the garden with him at Merton. And Nelson tells him the plan and says, well, what do you think of it? And Keats is astounded

by the audacity of the plan. He thinks, you know, it's so swashbuckling, so ambitious. And he doesn't know what to say. And Nelson answers his own question and says, I'll tell you what I think of it. I think it will surprise and confound the enemy. They will not know what I'm about. And that's exactly your point. It's the surprise, the chaos, the breaking with convention, all of that kind of stuff. In a way, it's a strategy bred of his contempt for the French and Spanish. He is assuming that he can break them utterly. A Sandbrookian strategy. A Sandbrookian strategy.

So that is the plan. And so he talks it over with the high command in London. And as you say, he has his last meeting with Pitt, who walks him to the carriage as a mark of his respect. He goes to the colonial office where he meets the one and only time Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Wow. I mean, but it's not a great, I mean, it's better than the meeting of Proust and Joyce or whatever. It is.

It is. Well, because Wellesley, the the Future Wellington is suspicious of Nelson. And when they first talk, thinks he's a bit full of himself. But by the end is one round and says that I don't feel that I ever had a conversation that interested me more. And Nelson is also summoned to see the Prince Regent. Probably less of a meeting of minds. Yeah. So that's on the 12th of September. 13th of September, Nelson spends the day at Merton with Emma. 10.30 in the evening, he takes a chaise for Portsmouth. So he rattles down from Merton down the Portsmouth Road, arrives there. The next morning, he rows out to Victory. And two men, so George Canning, very eminent politician of the age, given his name to many pubs, is one of them, accompanies him to his flagship. And then on the 15th of September, Victory leaves Portsmouth, sails off, and sails down and arrives with his fleet off Cadiz. He is joining Collingwood's force which by this point has had swollen to

eight ships um and he joins calder's force so calder is the guy who had fought the um indecisive battle against villeneuve that had had alarmed and frightened villeneuve and calder has been summoned back to answer a court-martial. And Nelson is very chivalrous about this. He tells Calder, don't go. I think you should stay here and fight. And when Calder feels honour bound to go, he allows Calder to go in his flagship. So Nelson's force is depleted by one ship as a result of that. And something else that Nelson does is to send away a further number of ships i think it's four or five um to go to

gibraltar ostensibly to to to strengthen the garrison in gibraltar but almost certainly the aim of that is that um villeneuve spies should be able to see that nelson is depleting his forces and do you know the uh well you do because you've got my notes the i'll pretend i don't one at one of the officers on those five ships that gets sent off to gibraltar so ends up not fighting at the battle of trafalgar is it the the father of charles dickens tom no it's it's the brother of jane austen francis wow what a revelation who knew who knew that he'd been part of collingwood squadron of cadiz and um very very upset to be sent off by Nelson. So he ends up not taking part in the conflict. There's a lovely moment, isn't there? Nelson writes to Emma on, I think, the 1st of October. And he says he's had this meeting where he's got all the captains in his cabin. And he tells them the plan, this incredibly aggressive plan he says when i came to explain to them the

nelson touch it was like an electric shock some shed tears all approved it was new it was singular it was simple and from the admirals downwards it was repeated it must succeed if ever they will allow us to get at them you are my lord surrounded by friends whom you inspire with confidence yeah and nelson tells them it is annihilation that the country wants splendid stuff the stage is almost set tom yeah he's very very excited about this this plan but obviously it requires the french and spanish to leave cadiz you know the french and spanish have been very very reluctant to face the Royal Navy. So the question is, why does Villeneuve leave? Well, first of all, he's given direct orders by Napoleon to take troops from Cadiz to Southern Italy and Sicily. So those are direct orders. Furthermore, his pal, Denis de Cray, the Minister for the Navy back in Paris, sends him a coded warning that Napoleon

is going to sack him and summon him back to Paris and basically says, you know, you should get out there and you should fight the British and defeat them if you don't want to get into serious trouble. And also Cadiz doesn't have many supplies and it's, you know, there is a yellow fever raging and it's really not a good place for a large fleet to be stationed. So all those reasons, I think, prompt Villeneuve to feel that he has nothing to lose, really, that he has to do it. Villeneuve has the advantage of numbers of ships. He has 33 ships and the British have 27. He also has far more men. He has 30,000 men and boys. The British have 17,000 men and boys. So he perhaps thinks, not only do I have nothing to lose, but there's a really good chance I could win this, or at least escape relatively

unscathed. I think escaping relatively unscathed is the best that he's hoping for. He also, of course, has to persuade the Spanish. And the Spanish are led by a guy called Federico Gravina, who is, in fact, from Sicily. So a bit like Napoleon, he speaks Italian as his first language. He's a very distinguished line of Spanish aristocrats. And one of the reasons I think why Nelson sends ships away from his own fleet, so to diminish it, is that it makes it impossible for Gravina and the Spanish to stay in harbour. They can't stay there without dishonouring themselves. The British fleet is palpably smaller than the combined fleet of the French and Spanish. They essentially are honour bound to go out as well. So all of which results in, on the 18th of October, the French and Spanish

go to mass in Cadiz. They embarking 19th of october they they sail out uh into the the bay of cadiz yeah they're out in the bay of cadiz the wind drops they're absolutely stationary they're kind of stuck there nightmare 20th of october very light breeze starts to pick up again combined fleetined fleet gets underway, heading southwards down towards Cape Trafalgar, towards the Straits of Gibraltar. And then it starts to rain. The winds pick up. Incredible gloom, very low visibility.

And the British ships, much further out in the Atlantic, lots of the captains are worried that the the French and Spanish have retreated back into Cadiz and that they've lost their opportunity to to have a to win the battle but by night time it's evident that actually the French and Spanish are still out at sea and that means that on the evening of the 20th of October, 1805, everyone knows, the British fleet, as on the French and Spanish fleet, that in the morning there will be a battle. And that very day, Tom, Nelson has sat and has been sitting in his cabin and he's written two letters, hasn't he?

One to his daughter, horatia his daughter lady hamilton i rejoice that you're so very good a girl and i and you love my dear lady hamilton who most dearly loves you i will be sure of your prayers for my safety blah blah blah be a good girl and he's also written a letter to lady to emma hamilton um may the god of battles crown my endeavors with success etc et cetera, et cetera. But he doesn't finish the letter because he wants to finish it after the battle. So, Tom, the stage now is well and truly set, isn't it? And as it happens, this is going out on the day before Trafalgar, isn't it?

So tomorrow, the 21st of October, is Trafalgar Day. And the good news for our listeners is that we are very much a podcast in true late 18th, early 19th century spirit. We are both patriotic and commercial, aren't we, Tom? So the good news is that if you too are patriotic and commercial, you can listen to our account of the Battle of Trafalgar on Trafalgar Day if you're a member of the rest is history club which is to podcasting what the royal navy was to 18th century warfare it's it's disciplined it's streamlined and it has an awful lot of limes so so you can join if you're a member of the rest is history club tomorrow on Trafalgar Day you can dance a jig

you can sing Heart of Oak you can do all that stuff Splice the main brace all that kind of stuff exactly you can interfere with Marlin Spikes

and jibs and stuff and you can listen to our account of the Battle of Trafalgar if you're not a member of the rest is history club just head to Apple Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts on Monday next week to hear our account of the Battle of Trafalgar the final installment in this three-part saga and on that bombshell tom we will see them next time for the battle of trafalgar goodbye 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. 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

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