Battle of Trafalgar

You know, the reason I was looking at all that Anglo-French stuff was because I wanted to mention the Battle of Trafalgar, and got so distracted that I completely forgot about it.  (My cousin insists I have ADD.) 

Unlike the Spanish Armada, this was a true naval battle, with 27 British battleships pitted against a larger, though less experienced, fleet of 33 French and Spanish warships, off the Cape of Trafalgar in south-west Spain.  Admiral Nelson, who had already lost an arm and an eye in previous battles, would lose his life to a French sharpshooter, but he didn't lose a single ship, while the enemy lost 22.  And he did so in a spectacularly stupid fashion.

Battleships are long, skinny affairs with guns along either side, maybe a couple in the back, but none in the front.  Thus, a naval battle involved little more than drawing up along side your enemy, and opening fire.  (Think of Eric Cartman's version of Rochambeau, where two men take turns kicking each other in the nuts.)  The admiral would coordinate the attack from the flagship by signalling with a flag, but if the ships were scattered then the resulting cannon smoke made signalling impossible.  Instead, modern tactics called for both fleets to line up parallel to one another, sail alongside one another, and blow the crap out of each other until one side signalled his ships to withdraw.  It was all very neat and civilized.

And Nelson wanted nothing to do with it.  When the enemy lined up its ships, he split his ships into two columns and charged.

Imagine, thirty-three warships lined up broadside with full guns to bear, and Nelson charging them head-on with no guns whatsoever.  For an hour. An hour!  By all accounts, it was the stupidest move in naval history.  Many sailors were killed before they even joined battle.  The mast of one ship was shot down, and the sails covered its guns, rendering it useless.  Even the wheel on Nelson's ship, HMS Victory, was blown away, and the shipped had to be steered by tiller below deck!

That it worked is absolutely incredible.  Nelson managed to cut off the French flagship, denying them the ability to signal (and therefore organize) the rest of the fleet.  The other column cut the line in two and opened fire at point blank range.  The battle raged for three hours before 11 French and Spanish ships escaped.

Now here's the irony: That victory cost Britain the war.  The French fleet was moving north in order to join a larger fleet in preparation for an attack on England.  Napoleon has massed his Grande Armée along the coast in preparation for the invasion, and Russia and Austria -- Britain's allies -- knew this.  They in turn had massed their armies near present-day Czech Republic, preparing to attack France.  But when the fleet never showed, Napoleon marched 200,000 soldiers across France and defeated the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz, dissolving the Holy Roman Empire, and ending the war of the Third Coalition.

It would be another ten years -- and four more Coalitions -- before Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo.  However, Nelson had saved Britain from invasion and is celebrated as one of Britain's greatest heroes.  If people only knew...