Prelude to Waterloo

Trajalgar (261 pp.)--Rene Maine--Scrlbner ($4.50).

"It is the appointed lot of some of History's chosen few to come upon the scene at the moment when a great tendency is nearing its crisis and culmination. Specially gifted with qualities needed to realize the fullness of its possibilities . . . they thenceforth personify to the world the movement which brought them forth." These famous opening words to The Life of Nelson (1897) by famed Naval Historian-Philosopher Alfred Thayer Mahan contain the gist of Rene Maine's new study of the most decisive moment in French and British naval history. Unlike

Mahan's works, Trajalgar will not be a classic, but French Author Maine's broad, historical approach, coupled with a brisk style, would win an approving nod from his great U.S. predecessor. Like Mahan, Maine is obsessed by a historical drama in which one of the principal characters, Horatio Nelson, was "specially gifted with qualities" demanded by the times and the other, Napoleon Bonaparte, decidedly was not.

By 1805 Napoleon ruled the Continent. Like Hitler more than a century later, he was obsessed by the idea that if he could master England, he would become master of the world. And he was sure that, if he could control the Straits of Dover even for twelve hours, England would be his. From the Channel port of Boulogne, he wrote: "The Channel is a mere ditch."

The Reasons Why. There were many reasons why the ditch stopped and eventually ditched Napoleon. Napoleon's military and organizational genius failed him --even hindered him--at sea. Nelson could say cheerfully: "Some things must be left to chance--nothing is certain in a naval battle!" But Napoleon demanded certainty all along the line. To him a fleet was just an army that happened to walk on the water. Ordered to wheel left or right, to advance or retreat, the fleet obeyed: only poltroons protested that there was no wind, or too many rocks, or not enough water. Whether a ship was a two-or three-decker, was "manned by 500 seasoned seamen or 500 raw, pressed men" was of no account. The damned thing was a ship--and the sooner it behaved like a soldier, the better.

The next important reason was the state of the French navy. For decades it had been treated like the ugly stepsister of the glamorous Grande Armee. On the eve of Trajalgar, Admiral Villeneuve summed up in a few words: "We have bad masts, bad sails, bad rigging, bad officers and bad seamen." Worst of all were the French admirals, who suffered from bad inferiority complexes. "Terrified of being condemned [by Napoleon] for the most trifling actions," the admirals preferred to take no action at all.

The Battle. The situation on the British side was strikingly different. England expected every admiral to do his duty as he saw it, even at the risk of being haled before the Board of Admiralty for making mistakes. So independent were British admirals that Nelson's second-in-command, Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, greeted his commander's famed "England expects" message with the words: "I wish Nelson would stop signalling. We know well enough what we have to do."

Each British ship was kept in good trim and worked by a crew with boundless confidence in its ability to lick the French. Britain's defensive precautions were superb. Agents, who reported to London the least move of any French warship, were stationed all around the coast of Europe, even in French ministries. At the mouth of every French port lay a British squadron, its sails forever visible on the horizon, its quick frigates ready to race for reinforcements should the French move.

Trajalgar, when it came, was an act of Napoleonic desperation--a sort of exasperated suicide. Napoleon's invasion concentration, the work of years, had reached its peak point: it must be used or broken up. Ready to go, by Historian Maine's account, was "the fantastic total of 2,343 vessels, capable of transporting 167-590 men and 9,149 horses." It was to guard these that Napoleon sent his fatal order to Admiral Villeneuve, then in port in Spain, just above Gibraltar: "Wherever you find the enemy in inferior strength you will attack him without hesitation." Against his better judgment, Villeneuve sailed out from Cadiz with 40 ships to meet Nelson's 33.

They met soon after dawn Oct. 20, 1805. A "series of single combats of the most bloody ferocity," the battle reached its peak when ship jammed against ship, exchanging furious broadsides and grapeshot at point-blank range, with boarding parties hanging massed along the bulwark netting. The rigging of the French ships swarmed with grenadiers and sharpshooters--and it was one of these, alongside Nelson's flagship Victory, who, recognizing the great captain dressed in "a blaze of colour," took aim and mortally wounded him with a single shot. Nonetheless, by midafternoon the Franco-Spanish line had ceased to exist, annihilated by "tactical superiority, mobility, rate of fire and dash."

It was an "irrevocable disaster" which not only rendered impossible Napoleon's invasion of England, but made inevitable England's invasion of France. "Trajalgar was the prelude to Waterloo," concludes Maine, and in memory of it, "French and English sailors to this day wear a black cravat round their necks; the latter mourn for their leader who fell in the thick of the fight, and the former mourn for their shattered illusions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.