by Alan Schom
On March 22, eight days before Villeneuve finally successfully cleared the Toulon roadstead with his entire fleet, the constant juggler of destinies, Napoleon Bonaparte, rescinded his fifth plan, issued just twenty days earlier. Instead of proceeding to Martinique, Villeneuve was to sail directly to Ireland and thence back to Boulogne, while Ganteaume would proceed to Martinique and then return to escort the flotilla from Boulogne. But this modified plan (the sixth) was rescinded on April 13, when Napoleon decided that Villeneuve was not only to rendezvous at Martinique after all, with eleven ships and six frigates, but was to resume overall command in the Antilles with the arrival of Missiessy and Ganteaume![610]
With this veritable deluge of orders and counterorders, in an age where naval communications traveled at the speed of the fastest sailer, chaos and grave complications often arose when dispatches did not reach their addressee in time. Frequently during this period even the best admirals in the French navy were left in the lurch after several changes of instruction from the high command in Paris. Such was again the case now. Following the third plan — the only one he had yet received — Missiessy duly sailed from Martinique for La Rochelle on March 28. Two days later Napoleon’s fifth plan (ordering Missiessy to remain at Martinique after all to await the rendezvous with the whole fleet) reached Missiessy’s empty berth at Fort de France. That same day Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies. “I am leaving, my dear General,” Villeneuve wrote on the thirtieth. “May fortune smile upon me, for I badly need it.[611]
This time it was Ganteaume, as commander of the critically important and more powerful Brest fleet, who was to cause problems for Napoleon. Theoretically, with five of Missiessy’s ships, eleven from Toulon, twenty-one from Brest, and another six Spanish ships from Cadiz, Villeneuve should ultimately have been sailing with perhaps forty-one ships, after leaving General Lauriston behind in the Antilles with some twelve thousand troops. On returning to Europe, Villeneuve was to destroy the British naval blockade of El Ferrol-La Coruña to release another fifteen French and Spanish ships there to join him, giving him a total of fifty-seven ships of the line and at least a dozen frigates. With these he was to plow up the Channel in one of the mightiest armadas of the nation’s most powerful warships ever seen, sweep aside the remainder of Cornwallis’s fleet, and convoy the Boulogne-Kent flotilla crossing, scattering Keith’s ships as they arrived. In the event that Ganteaume was unable to break through Cornwallis’s intimidating blockade, Villeneuve on his return from the Indies was ordered to Brest to rendezvous with Ganteaume’s fleet and together enter the Channel and advance to Boulogne.[612]
In fact Admiral Ganteaume failed to break out of Brest, despite a series of personal orders directly from the Tuileries to do so. On the one occasion he did actually reach the harbor’s roadsteads at Berteaume, Cornwallis came thundering in under a full press of sail. Ganteaume immediately put about and hurriedly retraced his own wake back into Brest. He was, he claimed, a virtual prisoner there, as a result of contrary winds, gale-force storms, massive desertion of crews, lack of competent officers and men, and the need for repairs — not to mention the presence of the British.
By now a frustrated Napoleon was writing directly to Ganteaume, sometimes once a week, enquiring what the problem was this time. “Be honest with me, how many ships do you have ready to sail...How many can I actually count on?” “Our ships are in a pitiful state,” the plump, pinkcheeked Ganteaume replied. “It is frightening to think of the small number of qualified men we have...and if we have to sail in bad weather, we would be greatly embarrassed.” The men, Ganteaume complained, were all “lacking the will, the force, the courage to succeed,” which of course was a damning condemnation of their leader — himself — whose job it was to instill just those qualities. “You cannot ask for the impossible,” a momentarily discouraged Bonaparte replied. “I cannot perform miracles.” Time and again Napoleon harried the unharriable Ganteaume. “Put to sea as quickly as possible,” Napoleon ordered him on March 2. “Attack and capture the 7 or 8 English ships [before Brest] and sail directly to Ferrol.” But Ganteaume would not budge.[613]
Ballasted vessels, but not his own heady
Thus leaves Admiral Ganteaume;
Going from Brest to Berteaume;
And returning from Berteaume to Brest in its stead.
So his men sang nightly in the taverns of Brest, and Ganteaume no longer showed his face in public.[614]
Meanwhile the seemingly infinite catena of errors, disasters, misunderstandings, and plain bad luck plaguing the French navy was being compounded by another unforeseen factor. It included, quite unknown to Villeneuve, a stubborn English vice admiral by the name of Horatio, Lord Nelson, who was feverishly seeking the elusive Toulon fleet that had escaped him. Unfortunately for Villeneuve, his British counterpart accepted neither excuses nor the limitations of restrictive orders. On discovering that Villeneuve had crossed into the Atlantic, he would soon be on his trail with his entire Mediterranean fleet, determined to track him down “even to the Antipodes,” as he put it.
Duly reaching Martinique on May 16, the antipodal Villeneuve remained largely inactive, adamantly refusing even to land Lauriston and his 12,440 men, despite Naval Ministry orders to do precisely that, and the insistence of the bewildered colonial governor, Captain General Villaret. Another glorious tropical dawn broke on May 30, finding the stubborn Villeneuve still nobly riding at anchor in the delicious clear waters of Fort-de-France, when the frigate Didon arrived from France with a set (the seventh) of Napoleon’s invasion plan orders, dated April 13. Then, on June 4, Rear Admiral Magon arrived with two more ships of the line, which were attached to the fleet (giving Villeneuve — with Gravina’s six Spanish battleships — the command of twenty ships of the line thus far), while unknown to Villeneuve, that same day, Nelson’s Mediterranean fleet reached Carlisle Bay, Barbados. Finally learning of this a week later, on June 11, while off the coast of Guadeloupe, Villeneuve panicked, and to Villarets’s amazement, signaled Gravina and the fleet to follow him as he dashed for the vast empty spaces of the mid-Atlantic — on the most direct course for El Ferrol.
If Nelson and Villeneuve were not destined to meet (despite another hot pursuit by Nelson), the French vice admiral did have another disagreeable surprise in store. On July 22, still some ninety miles off El Ferrol, Villeneuve, the master of disaster, encountered a squadron of fifteen British battleships commanded by Vice Adm. Sir Robert Calder. Given the excuse of no wind and much dense fog, eleven of Villeneuve’s fourteen battleships once again managed to remain successfully out of the range of fire, Admiral Gravina and his Spanish squadron instead bearing the full brunt of the English guns, losing two of their ships to the enemy. Calder — a man of pul-vinated ego, a boastful sailor, and an excellent fleet politician with influential friends and relatives in Parliament — with his remaining fifteen ships declined the honor of closing with the combined Franco-Spanish fleet and permitted them to escape (for which he was later court-martialed and removed from his command).[615]
Even as Villeneuve was sailing from the natural shelter of El Ferrol, where he arrived on August 1 (following a brief respite at Vigo), on July 26 Napoleon had been in the process of issuing his eighth campaign plan, in effect a modification of the seventh: “You are to proceed to Cadiz,” Bonaparte personally instructed him.
I want you to rally the Spanish ships you find there...and then sail to Ferrol, where you will then add the fifteen French and Spanish vessels there to your fleet...With all these forces now under your command you will next proceed to Brest [where Gantaume’s fleet was to join him]...and thence on to Boulogne, where, if you make me master [of the English Channel] for just three days...and with God’s help, I shall put an end to the destiny and existence of England.[616]
So much for the “six hours’” control of the Channel that Napoleon had originally suggested he needed for that crossing. Villeneuve had failed to attach the warships awaiting him at Cadiz, but apart from that everyth
ing was all right. He could add Ganteaume’s fleet to his own on the way north.
Meanwhile, with news of the appearance of Nelson and his Mediterranean Fleet reaching even the French capital, Talleyrand suddenly advised Napoleon to drop all invasion plans: “This unforeseen gathering of forces no doubt renders any plans for a descent [on England] quite impracticable for the moment,” he argued, even before learning of Villeneuve’s clash with Calder. In the jumbled report Napoleon received at Boulogne on August 8, the actions of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet got twisted, Villeneuve making it appear that the Spanish, through their own incompetence, had lost two ships, while thanks to Villeneuve’s remarkable skill, he had not only not suffered a scratch (the last was quite true) but had pursued and chased the (inferior) British fleet away — and had in fact won a sea battle in the process!
“The Combined Fleet has been in a battle at El Ferrol,” an exalted Napoleon informed Archchancellor Cambacérès. “It chased away the enemy fleet and for four days remained master of the battlefield.” Moreover Villeneuve had reported sinking one British ship (untrue) and battering two others (which in fact the Spanish had done). “I feel that we can consider this affair a real success,” the emperor concluded. If his fleet had lost two ships, he insisted, it was the fault of “Spanish blunders...You know how very little one can ever count on them...”[617] Such was the gist of the version written in Villeneuve’s hand (which failed even to mention his own astonishing actions at Martinique).
On entering the safety of the spacious double harbor of El Ferrol-La Coruña on August 1, Villeneuve was handed a copy of Napoleon’s eighth plan. At least the objective of sailing north to Boulogne had not altered.
Little did Napoleon realize, of course, the tragic, most delicate state of mind Villeneuve was now in, as he took on hundreds of casks of badly needed fresh water and supplies (which he had somehow failed to do during his long stay at Martinique), while attaching the French and Spanish ships he found there to his combined fleet, giving him a total (after discarding some badly damaged vessels) of twenty-seven ships of the line. As thousands of sailors and dozens of senior officers were making ready to sail in all haste for the great day of reckoning with the British, Villeneuve isolated himself in the spacious cabin of his spotless, double-deck, eighty-gun flagship to begin a fateful letter to the naval minister. And even as his combined fleet of twenty-seven of the world’s largest ships of the line was weighing anchor on August 10-11, back at Boulogne, Napoleon was finally receiving more accurate independent reports of what had really transpired during the famous sea battle of July 22 and at Martinique.
“Why is it that Admiral Villeneuve never said anything about this in his reports?” a stupefied Bonaparte exclaimed. “That damned Gravina is all genius and action in battle...If only Villeneuve had those qualities...How the devil does he have the nerve to complain about the Spanish? Why, they have fought like lions!”[618] It was only then, at his headquarters, in the Pont de Briques on the cliffs of Boulogne, that he discovered not only that the battle of El Ferrol had been very far from a French naval victory (for which in his initial enthusiasm he had ordered the firing of hundreds of cannon along the length of the Channel), but that Villeneuve had — against orders — failed to land and hand over Lauriston’s 12,440 troops in the Antilles to Villaret. Instead an angry Napoleon continued, “my islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe were left in jeopardy,” and his mighty combined fleet had fled. “All thanks to this incredible Villeneuve” whom he declared to be a man of “double vision,” that is, a coward, seeing twice as many enemy forces before him as really existed. “Here is this Navy, which could have done so much harm to the English, but which has returned having accomplished nothing,” General Reille complained to Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Marshal Joachim Murat, the titular Grand Admiral of the Empire.”[619]
And yet the moment was so ripe, Napoleon assured Admiral Decrès, with Nelson out of the way in London and Admiral Collingwood’s ships far away to the south at Cadiz, and Cochrane’s and the West Indies squadrons also far away at this moment, leaving “only twenty-four” English ships in the Channel and North sea. “Well, truly, what a splendid opportunity...what a perfect occasion, if I only had a real man there!”[620]
The moment was not quite as propitious as Napoleon claimed, but it was the last possible time when he could still launch his much-vaunted expeditionary force against the English, with the final hours dwindling fast. Having ordered Villeneuve to return between June 10 and July 10, the emperor could have set his astonishing plan in action if the admiral had arrived even now, a month late. With perhaps close to forty-seven mighty ships of the line escorting the flotilla, even the English navy might have had to concede defeat. But every day now was precious, as top-secret naval inspection reports indicated a rapid deterioration of his hastily built flotilla.
The truth of the doubts of every admiral as to the seaworthiness of flat-bottomed boats, especially if they were caught in high seas during their fabled crossing, had been borne out back on July 20, 1804, when, on reaching Boulogne, Napoleon had ordered Admiral Bruix to launch hundreds of these small vessels, fully manned and laden. He wanted to see for himself a full-scale demonstration of their capabilities and effectiveness.
The barometer had plunged the previous night, and the sky was completely overcast. Bruix informed the newly proclaimed emperor that he could not endanger the lives of his men and the safety of the boats finally assembled there just for the sake of a demonstration that could easily be delayed for a couple of days until the storm had passed. Napoleon who had come all the way from Paris with his full staff just for this naval exercise, remained adamant.
“Do you want me needlessly to risk the lives of so many brave men?” a stymied Bruix asked incredulously.
“Monsieur, I have given you an order. Once again I am going to ask you why you have not executed it. The consequences concern me and me alone. Carry it out!”
“Sire, I cannot,” Bruix, standing erect, replied.
“Monsieur, you are insolent!” Napoleon snapped, raising his riding crop as if to lash at the determined admiral.
“Sire, mind what you do!” Bruix responded, his eyes narrowing and jaw set as he stepped back, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword. Napoleon’s staff, surrounding him and enjoying the rare public rebuff of the great man, now suddenly froze in their tracks. Napoleon just stood there, pale, startled, and speechless. Finally throwing his riding crop to the ground, he addressed the only other admiral present.
“Rear Admiral Magon, you will carry out this order this very instant!” Turning, he ordered Bruix to leave for Holland before the day was out (an order he later rescinded).
Magon duly gave the orders, and the flat-bottomed vessels left the safety of the Liane basin and new breakwater to enter the raging sea. Soon dozens of boats were capsized and tossed about, many smashed to bits against one another or when they were hurled onto the rocks and beach. Officially the naval chief of staff announced the destruction of thirty boats and the deaths of thirty-one men, but like most official military figures issued by Napoleon, they were falsified. The British, who were offshore watching the whole spectacle and approached closely during the calm the next day, reported a minimum of four hundred sailors and soldiers dead and many, many dozens of boats capsized or smashed.
Napoleon himself gave Josephine quite a different version of this most preventable of tragedies. “The wind freshened during the night, and one of our gunboats dragged its anchor, but we managed to save everything. The spectacle was grand: the alarm guns, the coast a blaze of fire, the sea tossed with fury, and roaring. At 5 A.M. it cleared up. Everyone was saved and I went to bed with all the sensations inspired by a romantic, epic dream.” Clearly Napoleon’s view of the universe was different from that of mere mortals.
Despite such momentary setbacks, and the declining number of boats available, preparations continued for the famous Kent landings, although by December 1804 the proposed armada on whi
ch France and its allies had by now spent hundreds of millions of francs was already down to 2,054 vessels capable of ferrying only 127,000 men (not the designated 167,500) and 15,764 horses, from the six ports of Ostend, Dunkirk, Ambleteuse, Etaples, Wimereux, and Boulogne. The winters of 1803-4 and of 1804-5, the most horrendous in living memory, had battered these flimsy craft, leaving hundreds of wooden carcasses strewn on the upper banks of each of the coastal rivers and streams of the ports. Funds set aside for maintaining their full daily provisions of food and muntions for the past year and a half — which Napoleon had insisted on, over the protests of Forfait and Decrès — had not allowed either for ship maintenance or replacement. Torn rigging and sails, broken hulls and bottoms, left only one alternative in most cases — abandonment.
The results were obvious but painful. For although the chief of the general staff of the national flotilla reported on August 8, 1805, a total of 2,343 vessels still available, including 1,016 flat-bottomed gunboats, capable of launching 167,500 men and 9,149 horses, a by now most wary Naval Minister Decrès, on further investigation, discovered that only 672 were in seaworthy condition, which, with 1,058 transports (chiefly supplied by the Dutch), gave the flotilla a combined total of only 1,730 vessels. Unknown to Admiral LaCrosse, his chief of staff, Lafond, a bureaucratic officer intent on gaining imperial praise, had deliberately falsified his report, including 613 nonexistent gunboats, boats that had either sunk or been abandoned.
