The Battle of Trafalgar, fought on October 21, 1805, was one of the most decisive naval battles in history. Admiral Horatio Nelson led the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of France and Spain, forever changing the balance of power during the Napoleonic Wars. In this video, special guest Joshua Meeks will break down the strategies, key moments, and lasting impact of this legendary clash at sea.
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(00:00):
Welcome back to Generals and Napoleon.
We are very honored to have the esteemed Joshua Meeks joining us
once again from the US Naval WarCollege.
Hello, Josh. How's it going?
Good man, Thanks for joining me again.
Always happy. Yeah, those of you unfamiliar
with Josh, he joined us on our previous episode, Klaus Witz VS
Zhomini. And today we're going to talk
(00:20):
about a battle. And which battle are we going to
jump into today, Joe? Battle of Trafalgar, I would say
one of maybe the most kind of pivotal, significant moments.
It's hard always to say like, oh, this battle really turned
the tide of history. I think this one kind of did,
yeah. It rings a bell.
Sounds familiar. Yeah.
Before we get into that, I have a disclaimer Joshua Reed for us
(00:44):
and then we'll jump in. Yeah.
So I am a professor at the US Naval War College, but in this
capacity, I am speaking entirelyin my my personal capacity.
My views here don't represent those of the United States
government, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy,
or the US Naval War College. Some other things Josh is doing.
He's actually doing an event, I think in January at a bookstore
(01:06):
called Politics and Prose PROSE in Washington, DC And what is
that about? This is a, it's going to be a
virtual class, a Zoom class juston I have one, actually one I
think coming up in October and then one in January, February.
The one in October is going to be on The Three Musketeers,
Alexander Dumas, just a couple weeks blitzing through The Three
(01:28):
Musketeers and then taking a little bit more time to go
contemplative and deep into The Count of Monte Cristo.
These are two of my favorite books and I actually got
connected with this bookstore. They asked me to do a class on
Horatio Hornblower last year. And that was fun, right?
That was getting to talk about naval history.
But then they said, what else can you do it like let's, let's
try to find some fun French history.
(01:50):
And so we, we turn to account ofMonte Cristo and Three
Musketeers. So that's something that you can
find find on the Internet and register for register for the
class. And I'd love to see people
there. So if you're a fan of d'artagnan
or jailbreaks, then this would be for you, yeah.
Revenge, revenge, revenge, right?
Who's not a fan of revenge, right?
Well, the battle we're going to talk about today is kind of like
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a novel in its own right and youkind of touched on earlier.
I mean, there's 1000 naval battles in British naval
history. Why is this battle V battle that
everyone loves to talk about? So I think there's a couple
reasons for it, a couple good reasons for it, and then maybe a
couple bad reasons for it. I mean, it does establish in the
(02:35):
short term and in the medium term command of the sea, right?
This is where the British are able to say unequivocally we
control the waves. This is in part not just because
the British wind that that matters, right?
It matters if they win this battle, but it's always 2 sided.
You also have to look at what happens next.
And Napoleon doesn't challenge the British for command of the
(02:58):
Seas after this point. He tries to pull other levers to
attack the British, but from this point on, it's very easy to
just kind of take a look and saythe British are unchallenged
essentially for almost the next next 100 years at sea, if not
more, right? We'll call it yeah, a little bit
over 100 years before anyone really significantly challenges
the British. And it's it's rare that you can
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say that one battle established a century of dominance, right?
Usually it'll be re litigated atanother battle or even another
generation, right. But for Trafalgar 1, battle
establishes a century of naval dominance and that's it outlives
any of the people involved, right?
And that, that's remarkable. Well, yeah.
And the other striking thing about it, it is such a lopsided
(03:41):
affair, but at the tail end of it, the leader of the British
Navy, Nelson, gets killed. So it's like a, it's like a
bittersweet moment. It is well, and I think that's
this actually gets to maybe one of the I don't want to call it a
bad reason why it's so memorable, but a it's less
legitimate in the context of thethe battle itself is that no,
it's Nelson, right? It's a cult of personality.
(04:02):
Not only is this a cult of like Nelson already had a cult of
personality, right? He was a larger than life figure
at the time of Trafalgar. And then when he when he dies
afterwards, it crystallizes thatlegend.
And so that the legend of Nelsonand the legend of Trafalgar kind
of get mixed in together in a lot of ways.
And because both very definitivestopping points, right?
(04:25):
You don't Nelson does not sully his reputation afterwards,
right? Or he doesn't do something else
that, that that drowns out the majesty of his victory at
Trafalgar. That's it.
That is the beginning of the story of British naval
dominance, the sea. And it's the end of the story
for Nelson. And so because of those, because
it is such a final moment, both in terms of the political
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strategic landscape, but also interms of the cultural landscape
of who Nelson is to the British imagination, it serves as this
focal point of we, we don't needanother story, right?
We don't need another hero. We have the perfect story.
We have the perfect hero. We're we're happy here.
And so that that leads to it being having an incredible
(05:08):
weight in the British and then broadly the public imagination.
Right, right. And we'll, we'll get more into
it on the legacy portion at the end here.
But yeah, that kind of sets the table.
Let's talk about strategic background.
So it's eighteen O 318 O 4 Napoleon plan to invade Britain.
For those of you keeping score at home, the last time the
English coast was successfully invaded was 1066, so it's been a
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while. French and Spanish fleets needed
to secure control of the EnglishChannel.
So what is Napoleon's plan here,and how did the British plan to
stop him? Yeah, so Napoleon's plan and,
and I don't want to throw shade at Napoleon, right?
He's brilliant in a lot of ways.I don't know that he shines at
naval strategy, but his plan isn't, isn't a bad one, right?
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He knows that he has to. He has an army mast at the
English Channel and he's not really doing anything else with
him in, in 18 O 4:00-ish, right?In 18 O 4 going into eighteen O
5, he's not really doing anything else with them.
He is ready to invade, but he knows that he needs to, to force
the English Channel. This is the the perennial
strategic advantage that the British have is that you have to
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be able to have control over theEnglish Channel.
Because what you're going to do with all of those troops is
you're going to put them on flotillas, you're going to put
them on transports, and they're going to be a sitting duck to
anything with a cannon. Even if there is a battle, even
if you still have to worry, as long as you can have some
control for a week, call it control for a week.
You get those troops on the transports, you cross and you
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just overwhelm the British home defense.
That's Napoleon's plan. And that in and of itself is not
a bad plan. What he, what he realizes in
this kind of strategic chain of thought is, well, how do I force
the channel? Well, luckily I do have the
Spanish as allies. I can bring far more ships to
bear so many more. This is just a weight of
(06:58):
numbers, right? I can bring so many more ships
to bear than the the British can.
So that's what I'm going to do. So then the question becomes,
how do I do that? And the answer it is it gets a
lot more complicated. There is a fleet at Toulon,
there's a fleet at Breast, and there's a fleet at Cadiz.
If you're going kind of, you canimagine the map, right?
The the fleet at Toulon, it goesout and it breaks out from
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Nelson, who is doing a loose blockade, collects the fleet at
Cadiz. This is all good.
This is what Napoleon wants. Then yes, the Spanish fleet at
Cadiz. Then they go to the Caribbean.
Yeah, yeah, it's an amazing idea.
The ocean is not like crossing the land.
I think Napoleon probably got confused, but it it's way
(07:43):
different. It's way harder.
So yeah, to take the both of those fleets and then go to the
West Indies and then come back, right, it just seems crazy to
me. So the thought is there is a
part that's crazy and there's a part that that makes sense.
The part that makes sense is that the British do have a lot
of interests in the Caribbean. You can almost call it a center
of gravity, certainly an economic center of gravity that
Napoleon sees as a vulnerabilitywhere he says if I threaten the
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British interest in the Caribbean, they have to respond.
They will respond by sending ships and then it'll be a bait
and switch. I'll then swing back to Europe,
have my troops or have my ships swing back to Europe and the
Channel and the fleet at Breast,they will be even less well
defended because the British arehelping, are trying, are going
over to the Caribbean. That's not a bad idea, right?
(08:29):
It's it's manoeuvre. The problem that he runs into,
there's 22 real problems. 1 is, as you said, I don't think he
really grasps the impact that this is going to have on his
fleet itself because the logistics, the supply, even the
experience of going across the Atlantic makes it more difficult
for the ships to then do their job of forcing the English
(08:51):
Channel. The British have ships at the
English Channel just sitting there waiting.
And now you're ascending doing adouble trans and you know,
transatlantic voyage and quick rapid succession that there's
wear and tear on those ships, there's wear and tear on the
men, there's wear and tear on the supply chain.
And that's something that is difficult to like villain to
(09:11):
wave the the French Admiral, he's aware of that and that kind
of factors into his decision making.
But that's the idea is to combine the fleets and then use
those fleets to go to breast combined with the fleet at
Breast to then force the EnglishChannel.
If that works, you're going to have a fleet of about 60 plus
ships of the line going up against at that best half that
(09:33):
number for the the channel fleet.
It did have potential. The idea had a lot of potential.
Yeah, but it also seems like we're going to have you fight a
very exhausting battle. However, you're going to run a
marathon first. Basically, and, and the other
thing that I think Napoleon wanted to play a little bit of a
double game here in terms of if the British don't send a fleet
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to protect the West Indies to care the Caribbean, then we just
hang out in the Caribbean and and gain and get to have gains
there. Yes, I'd love to be able to
force the English Channel, but if they don't do what's expected
and defend it, then I gain something.
I I don't gain England, but I dohurt England by taking their
stuff here. Yeah.
That doesn't pan out though. Villanueve doesn't do it, and
(10:17):
that's problematic. Yeah, let's discuss the three
commanders, obviously, Horatio Nelson, as we've talked about ad
nauseam, one of the greatest naval commanders of all time.
Who are these other two fellows?Villeneuve, the Vice Admiral for
the French Navy, and Admiral Gravina, the commander of the
Spanish Navy. They're just three very
different personalities, right? They are, you know, Nelson and
(10:39):
I've I've done a good bit of research with Nelson, like one
of my favorite historian stories.
I don't think I said this last time, but I don't know if I
would have a reason to. But it's still one of my
favorite stories is I'm flippingthrough a log book and Bastion
Corsica and not somewhere that you're looking for Horatio
Nelson stuff, but he did he did do stuff in in Corsica early in
his career. And so I'm, I'm flipping through
(11:00):
this log book, kind of doing some research on another project
and out drops this, this handwritten note from Horatio
Nelson. And like this is, this is really
cool. Like this is the kind of thing
that if it was in Britain would be in a different environment,
right? Like this is it's very
handwritten, very, very, very cool.
But even then reading about his time in Corsica, reading that
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note, he is a aggressive commander.
He is a charismatic commander. He loves to take risks.
He has a very clear way of strategic thinking that is not
always in line with the prevailing doctrine of the deck.
Good for him. He's also again, he is a larger
than life figure. You can you can just read it
immediately when you're reading the logs of Nelson versus the
(11:42):
logs of even his British compatriots.
Nelson is exciting. He is cool, right?
Like he has that Genesee Koala. He is he's a cool guy and even
you can see it at the time this the the his sailors are like, I
want to be on the cool guys ship, right?
This is this is really fun. That is not Villanova.
Villanova is not one of the coolguys.
(12:03):
He is not a bad commander though, right?
He is not in and of himself a herose to his position within the
French fleet not through just luck or incompetence.
Well, a little bit of luck did help.
Napoleon actually specifically says that's what you are.
You're a lucky guy. You're I'm going to, I'm going
to keep you around because you're lucky.
(12:23):
Because at various junctures in his naval career, he had just
gotten a little bit lucky. And maybe that skill, maybe
that's luck. And so he's in a position to get
lucky again. I.
Mean, he's a cautious guy. I know he's one of the few who
escaped the battle and now he got his ships out of there.
But I also know like, Napoleon'son like, his last straw with
(12:43):
him, like, with his timidity, like.
Right. He's frustrated at his won't sue
refusal. But you know, Napoleon's plan
really was wreck havoc in the West Indies to force a response
and then that we're going to getsomething out of that response.
And Villanoy doesn't do that. He hears that Nelson is chasing
him and so he runs and that's OK.
That's partly part of the plan is well, we drew the British out
(13:05):
now let me get back. Yep.
But then he's starting to go tryto break the fleet out at breast
and he gets into a battle against the British.
This is by salvo. Robert Calder comes in and this
is the battle of Cape Finester, right.
And this is like it's inconsequential doesn't really
actually do much for either sides, but villain wave runs
(13:26):
from it essentially and then he's like, I can't do it.
I can't I can't get you out of breast right.
Calder interestingly, also is court martialed later for his
lack of aggression, not cowardice, but lack of
aggression in this battle. Fascinatingly, he's taken away
from Nelson's fleet right beforethe eve of the battle.
He's like, you got to go, sorry,buddy, you got to go back to
England to face a court martial because you're not aggressive
(13:48):
enough. And like, I need this ship, I
need this guy. But he goes back.
So then Villanowave says, I don't, He doesn't say it quite
this way, but I think it's there.
I don't trust Napoleon's strategic sense.
He wants me to go to breast. I don't think I can do that.
I'm nervous. I'm nervous about what's going
to happen if I do that. So he goes down to Cadiz, and
(14:10):
that's where Napoleon says, OK, relieved of command, here's your
here's your replacement. I need somebody who will do what
I'm what I tell them to do, and that's not you.
And meanwhile there's Gravina, who I think is well respected,
but whatever reason he's not in charge.
He's not, he's not in charge because the Spanish are the
junior partners here, even though they bring a lot to the
(14:34):
alliance. There's no ambiguity at any
point in the Spanish and French relationship of who is who is
the little brother. And it's it's always the
Spanish. This goes from 1796 onwards when
they are making their the making, making peace with the
French and then having the alliance with the French.
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It's always an unequal partnership.
And this was actually true when they were allied with the
British as well, right? When you look at Toulon in 1793,
when the British and the Spanishare allied together against the
French, the Spanish, again, no one respects them, which is
ironic in a lot of ways because at this point the Spanish
actually do have as much naval competence as the French do.
(15:16):
Then the French lost a lot of their naval experience, to put
it lack of a better term. They lost a lot of that
experience both because of the flight of the the officer corps,
the noble officer corps in the threat revolutionary era, but
also it's just a treated over time, right?
They don't. They have not had major naval
engagements and they've lost a lot of that experience.
(15:38):
The Spanish have lost some of that, but less so.
They should be more of a active partner, but because of alliance
reasons, they are the junior partner, no question.
Yeah. And the French ships, I mean the
French state, the finances have been poor for probably over a
decade. So the ships haven't been
maintained. Like you said, a lot of the
(15:58):
office corps emigrated away. So the French Navy isn't what it
once was. And I think that comes to bear
here shortly. So and the other interesting
thing that's worth noting right along that is one of the reasons
that both the French and the Spanish don't have as much
experience is because of the blockades that the British have
have put them under, right? This is the British do have
command of the sea at this point.
(16:19):
And you can see that by the evidence of the blockades that
they they have. When you are the blockading
ship, you are at sea, you are, you are constantly running
drills. You are, you're there.
It's good for the blockaded ship.
You're sitting a lot and any naval commander can tell you
that, you know, idleness is the death of rigor, right?
(16:40):
Like, and if you want to actually be have an effective
fighting ship, especially a in the age of sail, expertise
matters and they're getting lazy, they're getting bored.
They're they're at port, they'reblockaded, they don't have the
experience of actually doing naval battle.
Yeah. No, that's a really good point.
Well, it seems Villeneuve gets tipped off that he's going to be
(17:01):
replaced, so I think he's finally motivated to action.
What are the French? What are the forces involved?
How many does each side have in terms of ships and men and all
that kind of stuff? Yeah.
So you know, on the the simplestway of 30, we'll just say 33
ships of the line combined French and Spanish.
And it's worth noting that the French ships and the Spanish
(17:21):
ships in particular, they have bigger ships, they have more,
more cannons, unequivocally, they have some of the biggest
ships of the line that are, thatare at sea at that point.
And they're in this battle, right?
The British on the other side have 2727 ships of the line.
They are relatively unified. That's a big difference between
a joint command versus a unifiedcommand.
(17:43):
But sheer, in terms of sheer numbers, the British are
outgunned. There's no two ways about it in
terms of the the men involved. This is even more stark in a lot
of ways where the, the estimatesare around 30,000 French and
Spanish together, which that's alot of people on these ships,
right? That's it's a lot.
They are packed full, right? And interestingly, that's not,
(18:05):
they are not at full complement,particularly the Spanish are not
at full complement for, for thisbattle.
The British aren't really eitherthough.
They have 17,000 ships or men intheir combined together in their
ships. And they also are feeling some
of the burn of manning shortages.
But they are more competent and more confident in the people
that they have than the Spanish ISM French are.
(18:26):
Yeah. And so looking at it on paper,
before the battle begins, the French and Spanish have bigger
ships. They have more men.
And so I think that's all the more surprising.
Like, what happens? Like, it's just a route.
But before the battle, you're like, all right, well, this
might be a good battle, you know?
Right. And and this is, it's an
interesting like villain Wave wants to, he wants to go out and
take the battle after a fashion,right.
(18:47):
And like he, he, this is to yourpoint earlier that he is, he
knows he's going to be relieved and wants to, to, to put a lie
to the, the rumors of his cowardice or his
ineffectiveness. He's like, no, I can, I have a
bigger fleet. And that's part of the orders.
Part of the orders that he has is if you have, if you encounter
A numerically inferior British fleet, engage and destroy.
(19:09):
And so he's like, OK, like what,what do I have here?
A numerically inferior British fleet?
I'm going to. I'm going to join battle.
Do I actually think I'm going todestroy it?
Probably not. But I am going to join battle
with this numerically inferior fleet.
OK, so he rolls the dice. How does that begin on October
21st, 1805? What are the French and Spanish
(19:31):
doing? Yeah, So this is, this is a,
it's a, it's a really key momentgoing back to that discussion
about forces, about the British know they have fewer guns, but
they say our men are better. We are better at seamanship than
the French and the Spanish. So what we need to do is get in
close. We need to get in as close as we
can and just run, run, run, run roughshod over them.
(19:55):
The French and the Spanish, for their part, are anticipating A
relatively standard battle. They know that they that that
this is a tactic right when Nelson crossing the T as he
does, right? That's not something that is
completely like wow. I can't believe anybody would
ever do that. That's mind blowing.
It's a thing, right? It is a thing that can happen.
It's just not something that Villanuev thinks is going to
(20:18):
happen because they are so roughly comparable that you
don't need as far as his strategic calculus is is going,
you don't need to take big risks.
Nelson doesn't need to take a big risk in this fight.
He just needs to. They just need to need to shoot
each other a bunch and then whoever's cannonballs hit the
best is going to come out with more ships than the other side.
And that's it's just a normal day at sea, right?
(20:39):
Like no big deal. The again, you have so many
inconsequential naval battles that are are legitimate naval
battles that end in the fleets going their separate ways with
damage, right? That's what villain The Wave is
thinking. He's setting up for that.
He's setting up for just anotherday in the office.
We'll see what happens and let'sgo.
That's not what Nelson's settingup for.
(21:01):
Yeah, and I, I think you just hit upon it there, Bill, who
thinks there's going to be another day to, you know, we'll
lob some cannonballs on at them.They'll do the same to us, and
we'll go our opposite ways. Meanwhile, Nelson gives the
allegedly famous flag signal andspeech quote.
England expects that every man will do his duty.
End Quote. Why was he such a good motivator
of men? It really is hard to it's hard
(21:25):
to say it's hard to say what it is that makes Nelson Nelson
right. I will say that the two
immediate answers that come to mind.
One is he is incredibly competent himself, right?
He has displayed competence. He has he expects competence and
that that's a big part of it is you know what you're looking
for. So when the men he says expect
(21:46):
in this case, I expect you to doyour duty.
But this is a common theme all throughout his entire career is
saying I expect you to be amazing.
Why? Because I'm amazing.
I know what it looks like. I know what amazing looks like.
You, you can't fool me. Do your best and I'll know if
you're not. And that is enticing in a lot of
(22:07):
ways, right? Yeah, and I think there's
another part of it too, that theguy's missing an arm.
He has no sight, one eye. He's going to be like like
Napoleon or Marshall name. He's going to be at the
frontline with these guys battling.
Also, he's not going to be like and some flagship in the back
like, he's going to be right up there with him.
Exactly. Again, leading by example.
He's like, I expect you, my man.I expect you to do what I've
(22:28):
already done and what I continueto do.
I'm yes, it actually makes a lotmore strategic sense for him to
be middle or back, right, to be able to have a little bit more
vision. But no, he is.
That's arguable. There's there's value in leading
from the front, even from a naval engagement, just because
of the distances involved. But it's incredibly risky in
this scenario, as we will see, right?
(22:49):
But again, he says this is what I'm doing.
I am leading by example. So when he says I expect
everyone to do every, everyone to do their duty, there's this
implicit understanding of because I am right, if you
follow me, because I know where I'm going and I know what we're
supposed to be doing. And that is appealing to to his
men. And yeah, he is a
(23:11):
crystallization of the British pluck, right?
But also competence. And you can't disregard the fact
that he's his arrogance. And it's not really arrogance.
It's confidence that is not overconfident.
I mean, the battle of the Nile, right?
Like it over and over. He displays the fact that his
confidence in himself and in hismen is warranted.
Right. And I remember Wellington had
(23:32):
that meeting with him and he waslike, Oh my God, that's the most
arrogant person I've ever met inmy life.
But like you said, it's not arrogance if you've done
everything you've said. Accurate self-assessment, right.
That's what I that's what I tellpeople all the time.
I'm like, no, no, I just understand accurate
self-assessment. Yeah.
But the other thing that it mirrors in here, and this goes
(23:52):
even to the strategy. Not at least.
So the second to last message hegives is England expects that
every man will do his duty. He initially says confides that
every man will do his duty. But his signalman says, hey, I
don't feel like spelling that. Can I just do expects instead.
And Nelson's like, actually, that sounds better.
Yeah, go with it. I didn't know that.
That's awesome. Because expects is 1 signal
where as confides they would have had to do like CONFIDES.
(24:16):
So there actually is a made moresense.
But then he puts up another after that, everyone is like, Oh
yeah, cheering. And Collingwood, his other, the
commander of the other line says, of course I'm going to do
my duty kind of jokingly, like, no, that was a wasted message,
right? Like, of course we're going to
do our duty. But he says it kind of in good,
good humor. But then the next message that
(24:37):
he puts up is engage with the enemy more closely, and he
leaves that. That is the signal, right?
There is no other strategic guidance for his sailors.
It's engaged with the enemy moreclosely.
And this gets to that other element of why he's such a
compelling leader. He trusts his men, right?
He says, I gave you the vision. Like we met for dinner the night
(24:58):
before and I gave all my captains the vision.
Now it's on you guys to execute.I'm not going to micromanage.
I have confidence in you. Overconfidence maybe, but not in
this case, right? Like I have confidence that all
I need to do is tell you, go that way and you're going to
win. Yeah, yeah, and Napoleon did
that too, too. I'm to a degree he micro, but he
(25:18):
he said, look, go take that hillby 9:15.
AMI don't care how you do it. I'm going to leave that to you,
but that's what I expected. Yep, Engage with the enemy more
closely. Like I love, I love that line
because you can see so often in,even in naval battles where
going back to Clausefitz, right,fog and friction emerges and you
see this, that Nelson is planning for this, he says.
Implicit in that is I know I'm not going to be able to give
(25:41):
orders once, once this actually gets crazy.
My whole strategy is predicated on not being able to give orders
because I don't want the other guy to be able to give orders
too. And when we go head to head, my
guys are better. And that's that's the strategic
thinking is predicated on manipulating fog and friction
and using his own skill and the the skill of his sailors to win
(26:02):
the day. Let's talk about the opening
engagement around noon, Nelson'sColumn.
And I know we don't have maps onthis show.
We're just going to describe it to you best mentally as we can.
You're seeing the video now. We have our hands up.
But yeah, Nelsons column attacksthe French.
Excuse me, Franco Spanish centerand rear while Colleen Woods
column engaged the enemies van. What happens from there?
(26:25):
So again, this is very much according to plan for Nelson.
They split the they split the the Spanish Franco Spanish line
in three and where the when Nelson goes in and they pretty
much immediately gets caught in a in a nasty fight with the the
the French or the other French ships.
I believe it's his villain the way of ship at that point.
(26:46):
They get caught in a nasty fight, but they punch a hole
through the Spanish line. Now the risk of this and just to
to to give a little bit of why crossing the T, everyone knows
that it can be done, but it is areally risky thing to do.
The risk of this is that Nelson's ship, while it's
sailing towards the line is justgetting slammed by cannon fire
(27:06):
that he can't realistically respond to and nor can the ships
behind him realistically respondto this barrage that is coming
from nearly the entirety of the Franco Spanish line.
It is really risky. Right, because the front of the
ship doesn't have cannons on it,right.
So it's. Two at best, right?
He's got to get through it before he can fire.
Once he gets through, the tables, turn right.
(27:30):
Good seamanship matters because one of the calculations that
goes into Nelson's thinking is that it's pretty poor sea
conditions. It's not horrible, but it's
pretty rough seas. So the ships are going up and
down, right? And so that makes it really hard
to for the Spanish to hit. They're trying to gauge the
height of the ships on these rolling seas.
And a lot sometimes though, the cannonballs are going straight
(27:52):
into the water, sometimes far overhead.
So there are other myth ways that Nelson is mitigating the
risks that this strategy entails.
And Villanuev did not anticipatethat this was the strategy that
he was going to do. So once he punches through the
line, chaos, that's that's what happens next is really chaos,
deliberate chaos from the British side.
But the ships keep funneling through that brake, splitting
(28:16):
off and keeping the brake the line broken apart and making it
so that there can be no cohesiveresponse from the Spanish or the
the French. Yeah, and I think again, you,
you raise a good point. It's more than just having the
most cannons or the most men. It's, you know, how fast can you
reload? How good are you at aiming on a
rocky sea? I agree to you at like keeping
the sails up to catch the wind. And like you said, if you're at
(28:38):
port and you haven't trained to do all these things, maybe
you're just not as good as the English.
By some estimates and I'm alwaysa little bit when when people
sit and when, when you get the reports of the battle afterwards
from the the people who were at the battle, like the Spanish and
the French are like, it seemed like the guns never stopped
firing, right? They were always going.
You know, they at some point they there is a reload time,
(29:01):
right? Sure.
But by most estimates, let's sayit's a three to one right that
this the British were getting three shots to every once one
shot of the the Spanish and French.
And that that estimate that we had earlier 33 to 27, if you
triple the 27, because it's not just about the ships, it's about
how fast they can shoot their cannons, right?
(29:21):
And if you make it so that they are shooting three times as
fast, all of a sudden that 27 starts looking a little bit like
60. And the Spanish feel outgunned.
The French feel outgunned, even though they they technically
worked. Yeah, well we're engaged now.
Furious close quarters fighting British ships like HMS Victory
(29:43):
and Royal Sovereign are at pointblank range and quickly it seems
the British are dominating. How's how's this possible?
Just everything we're saying Or why aren't the French inflicting
as much damage, I guess. The two factors that come out
here 1 is they didn't expectations, right?
This was something that the British planned to do and the
(30:04):
French did not plan to do it. And so they are looking for
additional guidance. All Nelson said was engage more
closely, right? That's all the guidance he
needed to give. And at that, you know, he left
them again, he left it up the entire time.
What are my orders? Engage more closely.
The Spanish and the French are like, what are my orders?
And they're looking around and the line is split.
It's messy, right? You can't see anything.
(30:24):
And so there's just a delayed response.
Now in the actual hand to hand fighting that takes place
because you do get, you know, you're getting the, the, the,
the masts and the yard arms. They're getting tangled together
in various cases as well. And this is where, yes, there
should be a little bit more parity, but I don't want to put
too much weight in this. But I can't help but say that
(30:45):
the confidence of the men themselves, the yes, it's skill
as well. I think the British have more
skill at hand to hand fighting. They have more skill at
shipboard action. They have more, more skill
there. But I would argue that the
reason why you see such, I mean,it is a massive difference.
Confidence matters so much. So that is to me, the biggest
(31:06):
explanation of why we see the massive amount of discrepancy
between what they should have done on the Franco Spanish side
and what they actually achieved on the British side.
Yeah, and by 1:15, you know, French ships are striking color.
Some are sinking, some are running away.
The Spanish are running away. It's over pretty quick.
(31:26):
It is, I would say it's over when, when the victory punches
through the Franco Spanish column and doesn't go down,
doesn't strike colors, doesn't falter.
Really at that point it was going to be very difficult for
the Franco, the French and Spanish to to win.
And that again, is partly why they act in the way they do is
because they know that I think they they can assess, they can
(31:50):
see on an individual sailor level and on a leadership level.
We need to probably run and theycan't because they're split and
they're. It's a complete mess.
Yeah, and it's really interesting.
You know, Nelson realizes, oh, my God, this is going to be my
greatest victory ever. And he's had a lot of victories.
But around this time, he's mortally wounded by a French
sharpshooter. And I have a lot of questions
(32:10):
about his death because, one, wedon't know who shot him.
We don't know. The French sharpshooter's name
is a mystery. Muskets of the age are
notoriously inaccurate. Do you think this anonymous
sharpshooter was aiming for Nelson?
And do you think the Sharpshire was one of the Killed in Action
casualties? You know what happened here.
I'll give you my again, this is this is my sense.
(32:32):
Do I know for sure? Of course not right.
But I do think there was probably aiming right.
I mean, this is one of the things that the French and then
the British did as well. But the French were were pretty
we're pretty good at was saying let's pick off the officers
right? Like this is command on a naval
vessel is very delicate, right. Where as we see in the kind of
(32:53):
the macro sense of the battle, once that command structure
dissolves, chaos ensues and fighting effectiveness is
reduced almost to a negligible state.
That's true in the microcosm of a ship as well.
On a micro level of once that command structure is gone, if no
ones giving the order to fire, your cannons are probably going
to sit pretty quiet right now. The British have had have ways
(33:13):
of mitigating this knowing that that's a vulnerability they they
drill in the chain of command. So this is not something that in
this case it was not going to bea huge vulnerability.
But this is the going in theory of why they are trying to pick
off as many officers as they can.
Now. Does he see that it's Nelson?
I would have to say probably he's a distinctive figure and he
(33:35):
lived. He looms in the French
imagination, just as he does in the British imagination.
The nature of the industry, because he doesn't die right off
the bat, like I think it goes into his spine.
They have to bring him below deck.
I've been on the Victory. They have the the spot where
Nelson fell and you go down and I'm a pretty tall guy and I'm
actually shorter than Hardy Thomas, Captain Hardy, I'm
(33:56):
shorter than him. And like, you know, this would
be not very comfortable to be down here.
It's why he was up on deck all the time, I guess.
But yeah, this, it was absolutely a lucky shot.
And I would bet that either the person who shot did not know.
It was just, I don't know that Ihit Nelson, right?
I shot at an officer. It was chaos.
There was a lot of stuff. Did I hit him?
(34:17):
I saw him go down. Maybe that was shrapnel.
I don't know. There's so much, so much stuff
going on that it's likely that no one was going to be able to
definitively say in that moment that was my shot.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. There's quite a male stream of
cannonballs and musket balls flying around and stuff blowing
up. Right.
And you have you likely have 5 people taking the same shot and
(34:38):
most of the time none of them are hitting.
When one hits, you're not going to know exactly who's who's
who's hit. Well, you mentioned Hardy.
What were Nelsons final moments like?
Yeah, he knows that, his backbone says.
They got me through the backbone, right?
My backbone shot is gone and he knows that there's there's
likely no, no coming back from that.
(34:58):
So sometimes you get trapped into thinking, oh, well, Nelson
was the captain of the HMS Victory.
No, Nelson was the Admiral and then Hardy was the captain,
right? Hardy ran the ship, Nelson ran
the fleet. So he and Hardy had a a very
close relationship, a very closerelationship.
We're good friends and good, good colleagues.
So when Nelson is shot, he, you know, Hardy almost immediately
(35:19):
comes to him and Nelson is stilltrying to get a sense of what's
going on. Like have we won?
I think we're doing pretty good.But I I can't see right now.
He's still getting trying to getthese updates as they're taking
him down below decks to get him into more comfortable and to get
him whatever help they can. He sees one of the the tiller,
one of the two guys at the tiller and he's like, oh, no,
you need to, you know, do this instead of that.
(35:41):
And he's trying to help out again, that competence of he is
looking around while in excruciating pain, been trying
to do everybody's jobs for them in a bit of an arrogant way, but
also in a way that endears him to people of like, don't worry,
Sir, I got this right. You got other things to worry
about. And yeah, it's hot, it's messy.
He's asking for fans. He's asking for drinks.
(36:03):
Like he's in a lot of pain, a lot of pain.
But at the very end, about 2:30 where I believe it's Hardy that
says victory is complete, right?We like the kind of the the
metric that he gives is, you know, 15 of the 33 ships have
struck their colors and none of ours have, right?
That is the devastating completevictory that Nelson that was
(36:24):
that was already already essentially a done deal.
And that was what Nelson wanted.He was like, I am going for the
knockout blow. Back to that original question
of why does this loom so large in the public imagination?
He went for the knockout blow and he hit it right.
But he's below decks and he hears this and he, you know,
theoretically his his last words.
Thank God I've done done my duty.
(36:47):
I think this is probably not actually the last words.
If I had to guess, that's put inafterwards as like part of the
legend. What I choose to believe are his
last words is the one the last words that we do know
definitively that are recorded are kiss me hard, right, which
is kind of spawned some like, Oh, well, maybe maybe there's
more going on there. But this is I would read it as a
pretty clearly kind of brotherlyaffection of, you know, I'm I'm
(37:10):
I'm dying, right, You know, and you want.
Your best friend close to you and yeah.
Exactly. And, you know, Hardy leans down,
gives him a, gives him a kiss onthe forehead and, and, you know,
Nelson passes away. He may have murmured at the end.
You know, thank God I've done myduty.
I think that's possible. If that, if that happened, good
for him. I think it's more likely that in
that final moment, he is in thatmoment happy to know that his
(37:33):
duty has been done. Well, let's discuss the
aftermath and the outcome of thebattle.
As you mentioned before, I thinkBritish victory is total 22
Franco Spanish ships were captured or destroyed.
No British ships are lost. Do we know how many men died on
each side or were casualties? It's on the, it's a, it's a
very, it's a very, very small amount for the British, let's
(37:57):
say for the French and Spanish, it's around 4000 killed in
action with another 7:00-ish taken prisoner, 7000 taken
prisoner. I mean, honestly, that's a,
that's a massive killed in action account for an or killed
in action number for a naval battle.
You can get a lot of casualties when the ships go down.
But because usually it is just aclear like, OK, we've lost
(38:20):
disengage and this one there, itwas very difficult for them to
disengage. So for the British, the about
1500 is the high and that's total killed and wounded.
It's a lot less killed and 500 killed with about 1000 wounded.
You know, there's some difficulty in assessing all of
this, but general numbers about a right around there.
Yes, it's almost like a 5 or 6 to 1 ratio.
(38:43):
I mean, it's, it's, yeah, bad Napoleon's reaction.
And we have to discuss what happens to Bill Noove allegedly
in prison later. What is Napoleon's thought of
all this? So Napoleon obviously not well
pleased, but it's also importantto note that he's already called
off the invasion, right? Trafalgar is a not an
(39:03):
afterthought. But as far as the invasion of
Britain goes, there is not goingto be an invasion of Britain in
1805. Does not matter if the tables
are turned right, like if, if the Franco Spanish fleet has as
much success as the British one did, right.
If you completely flip the tables now, eventually in that
case, yes, Britain would have been invaded because command of
the Seas would have been lost. But regardless, those troops
(39:26):
that had been on the border of the English Channel, they were
at at Ulm and then Austerlitz, right?
Like they were gone. Yeah, doing really impressive
things for the record. So Napoleon's reaction to this
is certainly frustration at Villanuev, frustration at the
the loss, recognizing that this was probably one of the best
shots that he had, if not the best opportunity in a specific
(39:49):
battle. That from here, rebuilding the
the fleet to be able to contest sea power was going to be
incredibly difficult. It's not to say he doesn't,
right? He does invest in naval
rearmament and rebuilding so that he doesn't completely give
it up to the British, right? But from this point, his
strategy to attack Britain fundamentally changes, becomes
far more economic and diplomaticas opposed to.
(40:12):
Military. What happens to our friend?
They'll knew though. Yeah, he is.
So he's captured now, Gravina, for the record, he has his arm
shattered and dies from his wounds just to kind of close
that. He dies about six months later.
When he dies, he kind of says, you know, I'll be in the company
of Nelson, right? He has this honorable end, as
opposed to Illinois, who does not necessarily have nearly as
(40:36):
honorable of an end he is. I don't want to say he's a
scapegoat because I actually think he is to blame for a lot
of this, right? Well, yeah, I'm going to ask you
that too. Like when we Monday morning
quarterback it, like what percentage is Villeneuve at
Fuller? Obviously Napoleon has some
fault in it. So yeah, Villanoy, if he he, he
makes the wrong call in that he sails out and and Gavina says we
(40:58):
shouldn't sail out, right? We should wait for
reinforcements. Even something as is not, it's
not insignificant that there just been a bout of yellow
fever. Anytime you go to the Caribbean,
you're going to probably have some yellow fever.
And that happened for the FrancoSpanish fleet.
And so Gravina at the very leastis saying that let's just
recover and then go out. These things are are not in our
favor. And in a way of says, no, we're
going out. That's a bad decision.
(41:19):
When faced with Nelson, though, when faced with kind of the the
really pretty spectacular leadership that Nelson provides,
it's hard to say that there would have been a different
outcome, right? So if if you put Grovina instead
of Villain Wave, all that Matt, all that changes is that the
battle doesn't take place right then.
But I do blame Villain Wave for that decision to engage in an
(41:43):
unfavorable scenario and thinking that he was going to
have what we call a cooperative adversary, right?
That your, your adversary is going to think in the same way
that you do and do what you wantthem to do.
Nelson was an uncooperative adversary and Villain Wave made
very poor assumptions thinking that it was going to go his way.
Well. Then he makes another bad
decision. The British release him from
(42:03):
captivity and for some unknown reason he goes back to France.
That's the last place I would have gone, yeah.
Yeah, Yeah, I don't it's hard toread whether he is a a true
believer or not, right. You know, this is this is one of
those those difficult things to assess.
You know, he is in the Navy before the French Revolution
drops the noble affectation during the French Revolution
stays in again is lucky at the Nile, things like that.
(42:26):
But he's he's committed, right. And I would say, I would go so
far as to say that he is a patriot, right?
He is someone who is not just init for his own personal
aggrandizement or wealth. He's in it because he believes
in believes in in France. And therefore to a certain
extent we can say believes in Napoleon, right?
That France is under like he's he's, he wants to be part of
(42:47):
this vision and his patriotism is not valued, put it that way.
And ultimately likely commit suicide at the end.
Right. Yeah.
Napoleon throws him in prison. They find him dead in his cell.
I mean, you can conspiracy talk that Napoleon had him killed.
Whatever. I, I lean towards the, the
Occam's raism simpler explanation that he was a
patriot who came home wanting todo what he could, was thrown
(43:10):
into prison, said your services are not just not needed, but you
are not what we want and we wantto erase your memory.
And that that cognitive dissonance resulted in him
saying, well, I have nothing. I, I have nothing to live for.
I've lived for this country. I've lived for this Navy for
most of my life. And if they if I can't live for
that, then what is there worth living for, right?
(43:32):
Let's talk strategic consequences.
Obviously this ends in Napoleon's hope of invading
Britain. Establishes British naval
supremacy for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars, as you alluded
to at the beginning of our podcast.
Secures British naval superiority for the next 100
years. Is that accurate?
I mean, I guess it is in Europe at least.
Maybe. Maybe it is worldwide.
I mean, it's not that no one else sails, right?
(43:55):
And this is kind of one of the things that it matters what you
do with it. When you have that power, when
you have that, that command of the sea, what do you do with it
matters? And the British could have said
we are going to be heavy-handed.But really what they did was go
into the 19th century and establish their 19th century
version of imperialism through alittle bit similar to what the
United States does in terms of the freedom of navigation,
(44:17):
saying we are going to benefit most from free seas.
And so we want to protect the freedom of the Seas.
If you want to try to contest that, you're going to have to
contend with the greatest Navy of the time.
And we are going to grow our empire because we are just
better. We we have more, we have more
ships, we have a head start. We have all of this in our back
pocket. So what you do with that control
(44:37):
matters. But it was Trafalgar that
established that control. Well, I guess final question is
what is the legacy of Trafalgar?I mean, it is a very important
battle, but it doesn't really stop Napoleon.
He goes on for another 10 years.So it's, it's not like a
Waterloo or a it's a clinching victory, but does it alter the
overall strategic situation? I was talking with someone about
(44:59):
Napoleon and talking about the fact that Napoleon didn't lose
hardly any battles and was like,well, what about Trafalgar?
Like Napoleon didn't lose Trafalgar.
Like that wasn't Napoleon's. Well, there's a little bit of
Napoleon's fault in the sense that he was the head of state at
the time, but this was not a military loss that we're going
to pin on Napoleon. This is a military loss we're
going to pin on filling the wave, right?
So this is where that that dual bat for Napoleon gets really
(45:23):
interesting. He is the head of state.
And as head of state, he is ordering this as a military
maneuver. But this is not him being the
military head here. So does it change his military
ability? Does it change his military
ambitions? Owen, Austerlitz, Yena, like we
get some incredible, incredible military victories on the
continent that showcase that Napoleon is absolutely a force
(45:47):
to be reckoned with. But as I was thinking about this
podcast, reflecting on Trafalgar, one of the things
that I hit on that I hadn't actually hit on before was this
tension between Halford Mckinder, who has this Rimland
thesis, right, that the seat of power is a little bit Corbettian
as well in terms of naval theory.
But the seat of power is that land that if you want to have
(46:09):
geopolitical or geostrategic control, you need to control the
heartland and then contest the Rimlands.
That's that's Mckinder's thesis.Now, contrary to that is Alfred
Thayrmahan, who says if you wantto have political control,
especially if you're an island nation or a nation like the
United States, bounded on two sides by the sea, what you don't
need the heartland, You need thecommand of the sea.
(46:31):
You need sea lines of communication.
That's that's how you actually exert power and geopolitical
influence. And Trafalgar plays into that,
right, Because you have the British being having the
Mahanian vision of control. They can't actually do anything
on the continent for quite a while.
Napoleon has control of the continent, of the heartland.
And so you see these two visionsof what does power actually look
(46:54):
like and how do you actually utilize geopolitical power and
authority and position you see them in in the post Trafalgar
world where Napoleon is TRA is is ascendant on land and the
British are unchallenged at sea.And we see which one wins,
honestly. And I'm not just the Naval War
College homie here, right? Like this is like Napoleon
(47:15):
struggles with the fact that he cannot command the sea, whereas
the British struggle at times with the fact that they cannot
command the land, but find a wayto influence it nonetheless,
right? They do find a way to influence
what happens on land using the availability of sea power.
And so one of the legacies of Trafalgar in this broad sense is
(47:39):
a vindication. It's not a vindication because
Mahan comes much later, but it'salmost the the kernel of Mahan's
idea, the kernel of of a lot of the naval strategic thinking
that we have right now of how doyou turn naval power into long
lasting influence. Trafalgar is the template for
that. Trafalgar shows what's possible.
(47:59):
Like you recognize your bias there though.
That was good a little bit. I actually like Mckinder a lot.
I think he's got a lot of of value and and thinking about
Trafalgar. Trafalgar was so important to
Mahan and looking at what Napoleon does you can see
Mckinder kind of make some some claims there too.
And I think there's a legacy on on Nelson's part too, because
the guy personal wise had a lot of drama and scandal in this
(48:22):
end, even though he had all thatgoing on, his mistress and all
that. It's what a way to end like in a
like a blaze of glory with your finest victory.
Like, it's just incredible. It is and it is, it did become a
big part of the British mythos, right?
I mean, you go to Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, right?
That is the center point of London in a lot of ways.
(48:45):
It's it's so critical to who they are.
And and like I said earlier, it it helps that he didn't like he
had the drama, but he didn't actually do anything like he
didn't have the opportunity to, to ruin his reputation.
And I don't think he would have to be fair.
Nelson was a skilled operator ina lot of ways, but it gives the
the British something to latch onto in terms of the peak,
(49:08):
unadulterated, unsullied image of what it is to be British and
British at sea, right? Like Wellington is brilliant in
a lot of ways, but Wellington does not become that same, does
not have that same mythical quality.
And I think that's in no small part because he's a his army,
right? Like he's the identity marker is
not there for the British sense of self, whereas for Nelson it
(49:31):
is. And he goes on Wellington to
have mixed results, kind of as aPrime Minister.
And he lives a long life and maybe he just, he doesn't have
that glory that he had at Waterloo when that was the peak,
kind of like Nelson at the peak at Trafalgar.
If Wellington had died at Waterloo, you know, what a great
place of glory. But yeah, like if you live long
enough, maybe your star isn't asas impressive as it is at your
(49:52):
peak. Right.
And there is, you know, the British Navy becomes such a
core, right, core part of who they are and what their what
their power is and what their identity is.
I had been before that as well, but this solidified it and
rigidified it in a lot of ways that that you see last into the
20th century and even to certainextent still today, Right.
(50:13):
You know, the the Battle of Trafalgar is a essentially a,
you know, it's certainly a navalholiday and it's a it's a
holiday, yeah. Big part of who they are as a
nation. Yeah.
Well, thank you for that, Josh. Excellent overview of Trafalgar,
really good stuff. Again, Josh is going to appear
at Politics and Pros in Washington DC in October and
(50:35):
January if you want to go onlineand find that recommended.
And we thank him always for his time.
This is a fun, this is always fun.
Have a blast. And hopefully, hopefully I
didn't make too many hand movements for those who are who
are just listening. I just stick you late wildly.
But yeah, always, always fun. Hope this was useful.
Yeah, yeah. And again, we'll put all
(50:56):
episodes online on YouTube, all the videos that we record to go
on YouTube. If you don't have Spotify, you
want to see the videos, please check out our YouTube channel.
And yeah, Josh Meeks, thanks so much, bud.
Have a good one.
Welcome back to Generals and Napoleon.
We are very honored to have the esteemed Joshua Meeks joining us
once again from the US Naval WarCollege.
Hello, Josh. How's it going?
Good man, Thanks for joining me again.
Always happy. Yeah, those of you unfamiliar
with Josh, he joined us on our previous episode, Klaus Witz VS
Zhomini. And today we're going to talk
(00:20):
about a battle. And which battle are we going to
jump into today, Joe? Battle of Trafalgar, I would say
one of maybe the most kind of pivotal, significant moments.
It's hard always to say like, oh, this battle really turned
the tide of history. I think this one kind of did,
yeah. It rings a bell.
Sounds familiar. Yeah.
Before we get into that, I have a disclaimer Joshua Reed for us
(00:44):
and then we'll jump in. Yeah.
So I am a professor at the US Naval War College, but in this
capacity, I am speaking entirelyin my my personal capacity.
My views here don't represent those of the United States
government, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy,
or the US Naval War College. Some other things Josh is doing.
He's actually doing an event, I think in January at a bookstore
(01:06):
called Politics and Prose PROSE in Washington, DC And what is
that about? This is a, it's going to be a
virtual class, a Zoom class juston I have one, actually one I
think coming up in October and then one in January, February.
The one in October is going to be on The Three Musketeers,
Alexander Dumas, just a couple weeks blitzing through The Three
(01:28):
Musketeers and then taking a little bit more time to go
contemplative and deep into The Count of Monte Cristo.
These are two of my favorite books and I actually got
connected with this bookstore. They asked me to do a class on
Horatio Hornblower last year. And that was fun, right?
That was getting to talk about naval history.
But then they said, what else can you do it like let's, let's
try to find some fun French history.
(01:50):
And so we, we turn to account ofMonte Cristo and Three
Musketeers. So that's something that you can
find find on the Internet and register for register for the
class. And I'd love to see people
there. So if you're a fan of d'artagnan
or jailbreaks, then this would be for you, yeah.
Revenge, revenge, revenge, right?
Who's not a fan of revenge, right?
Well, the battle we're going to talk about today is kind of like
(02:14):
a novel in its own right and youkind of touched on earlier.
I mean, there's 1000 naval battles in British naval
history. Why is this battle V battle that
everyone loves to talk about? So I think there's a couple
reasons for it, a couple good reasons for it, and then maybe a
couple bad reasons for it. I mean, it does establish in the
(02:35):
short term and in the medium term command of the sea, right?
This is where the British are able to say unequivocally we
control the waves. This is in part not just because
the British wind that that matters, right?
It matters if they win this battle, but it's always 2 sided.
You also have to look at what happens next.
And Napoleon doesn't challenge the British for command of the
(02:58):
Seas after this point. He tries to pull other levers to
attack the British, but from this point on, it's very easy to
just kind of take a look and saythe British are unchallenged
essentially for almost the next next 100 years at sea, if not
more, right? We'll call it yeah, a little bit
over 100 years before anyone really significantly challenges
the British. And it's it's rare that you can
(03:19):
say that one battle established a century of dominance, right?
Usually it'll be re litigated atanother battle or even another
generation, right. But for Trafalgar 1, battle
establishes a century of naval dominance and that's it outlives
any of the people involved, right?
And that, that's remarkable. Well, yeah.
And the other striking thing about it, it is such a lopsided
(03:41):
affair, but at the tail end of it, the leader of the British
Navy, Nelson, gets killed. So it's like a, it's like a
bittersweet moment. It is well, and I think that's
this actually gets to maybe one of the I don't want to call it a
bad reason why it's so memorable, but a it's less
legitimate in the context of thethe battle itself is that no,
it's Nelson, right? It's a cult of personality.
(04:02):
Not only is this a cult of like Nelson already had a cult of
personality, right? He was a larger than life figure
at the time of Trafalgar. And then when he when he dies
afterwards, it crystallizes thatlegend.
And so that the legend of Nelsonand the legend of Trafalgar kind
of get mixed in together in a lot of ways.
And because both very definitivestopping points, right?
(04:25):
You don't Nelson does not sully his reputation afterwards,
right? Or he doesn't do something else
that, that that drowns out the majesty of his victory at
Trafalgar. That's it.
That is the beginning of the story of British naval
dominance, the sea. And it's the end of the story
for Nelson. And so because of those, because
it is such a final moment, both in terms of the political
(04:46):
strategic landscape, but also interms of the cultural landscape
of who Nelson is to the British imagination, it serves as this
focal point of we, we don't needanother story, right?
We don't need another hero. We have the perfect story.
We have the perfect hero. We're we're happy here.
And so that that leads to it being having an incredible
(05:08):
weight in the British and then broadly the public imagination.
Right, right. And we'll, we'll get more into
it on the legacy portion at the end here.
But yeah, that kind of sets the table.
Let's talk about strategic background.
So it's eighteen O 318 O 4 Napoleon plan to invade Britain.
For those of you keeping score at home, the last time the
English coast was successfully invaded was 1066, so it's been a
(05:30):
while. French and Spanish fleets needed
to secure control of the EnglishChannel.
So what is Napoleon's plan here,and how did the British plan to
stop him? Yeah, so Napoleon's plan and,
and I don't want to throw shade at Napoleon, right?
He's brilliant in a lot of ways.I don't know that he shines at
naval strategy, but his plan isn't, isn't a bad one, right?
(05:53):
He knows that he has to. He has an army mast at the
English Channel and he's not really doing anything else with
him in, in 18 O 4:00-ish, right?In 18 O 4 going into eighteen O
5, he's not really doing anything else with them.
He is ready to invade, but he knows that he needs to, to force
the English Channel. This is the the perennial
strategic advantage that the British have is that you have to
(06:16):
be able to have control over theEnglish Channel.
Because what you're going to do with all of those troops is
you're going to put them on flotillas, you're going to put
them on transports, and they're going to be a sitting duck to
anything with a cannon. Even if there is a battle, even
if you still have to worry, as long as you can have some
control for a week, call it control for a week.
You get those troops on the transports, you cross and you
(06:37):
just overwhelm the British home defense.
That's Napoleon's plan. And that in and of itself is not
a bad plan. What he, what he realizes in
this kind of strategic chain of thought is, well, how do I force
the channel? Well, luckily I do have the
Spanish as allies. I can bring far more ships to
bear so many more. This is just a weight of
(06:58):
numbers, right? I can bring so many more ships
to bear than the the British can.
So that's what I'm going to do. So then the question becomes,
how do I do that? And the answer it is it gets a
lot more complicated. There is a fleet at Toulon,
there's a fleet at Breast, and there's a fleet at Cadiz.
If you're going kind of, you canimagine the map, right?
The the fleet at Toulon, it goesout and it breaks out from
(07:22):
Nelson, who is doing a loose blockade, collects the fleet at
Cadiz. This is all good.
This is what Napoleon wants. Then yes, the Spanish fleet at
Cadiz. Then they go to the Caribbean.
Yeah, yeah, it's an amazing idea.
The ocean is not like crossing the land.
I think Napoleon probably got confused, but it it's way
(07:43):
different. It's way harder.
So yeah, to take the both of those fleets and then go to the
West Indies and then come back, right, it just seems crazy to
me. So the thought is there is a
part that's crazy and there's a part that that makes sense.
The part that makes sense is that the British do have a lot
of interests in the Caribbean. You can almost call it a center
of gravity, certainly an economic center of gravity that
Napoleon sees as a vulnerabilitywhere he says if I threaten the
(08:07):
British interest in the Caribbean, they have to respond.
They will respond by sending ships and then it'll be a bait
and switch. I'll then swing back to Europe,
have my troops or have my ships swing back to Europe and the
Channel and the fleet at Breast,they will be even less well
defended because the British arehelping, are trying, are going
over to the Caribbean. That's not a bad idea, right?
(08:29):
It's it's manoeuvre. The problem that he runs into,
there's 22 real problems. 1 is, as you said, I don't think he
really grasps the impact that this is going to have on his
fleet itself because the logistics, the supply, even the
experience of going across the Atlantic makes it more difficult
for the ships to then do their job of forcing the English
(08:51):
Channel. The British have ships at the
English Channel just sitting there waiting.
And now you're ascending doing adouble trans and you know,
transatlantic voyage and quick rapid succession that there's
wear and tear on those ships, there's wear and tear on the
men, there's wear and tear on the supply chain.
And that's something that is difficult to like villain to
(09:11):
wave the the French Admiral, he's aware of that and that kind
of factors into his decision making.
But that's the idea is to combine the fleets and then use
those fleets to go to breast combined with the fleet at
Breast to then force the EnglishChannel.
If that works, you're going to have a fleet of about 60 plus
ships of the line going up against at that best half that
(09:33):
number for the the channel fleet.
It did have potential. The idea had a lot of potential.
Yeah, but it also seems like we're going to have you fight a
very exhausting battle. However, you're going to run a
marathon first. Basically, and, and the other
thing that I think Napoleon wanted to play a little bit of a
double game here in terms of if the British don't send a fleet
(09:54):
to protect the West Indies to care the Caribbean, then we just
hang out in the Caribbean and and gain and get to have gains
there. Yes, I'd love to be able to
force the English Channel, but if they don't do what's expected
and defend it, then I gain something.
I I don't gain England, but I dohurt England by taking their
stuff here. Yeah.
That doesn't pan out though. Villanueve doesn't do it, and
(10:17):
that's problematic. Yeah, let's discuss the three
commanders, obviously, Horatio Nelson, as we've talked about ad
nauseam, one of the greatest naval commanders of all time.
Who are these other two fellows?Villeneuve, the Vice Admiral for
the French Navy, and Admiral Gravina, the commander of the
Spanish Navy. They're just three very
different personalities, right? They are, you know, Nelson and
(10:39):
I've I've done a good bit of research with Nelson, like one
of my favorite historian stories.
I don't think I said this last time, but I don't know if I
would have a reason to. But it's still one of my
favorite stories is I'm flippingthrough a log book and Bastion
Corsica and not somewhere that you're looking for Horatio
Nelson stuff, but he did he did do stuff in in Corsica early in
his career. And so I'm, I'm flipping through
(11:00):
this log book, kind of doing some research on another project
and out drops this, this handwritten note from Horatio
Nelson. And like this is, this is really
cool. Like this is the kind of thing
that if it was in Britain would be in a different environment,
right? Like this is it's very
handwritten, very, very, very cool.
But even then reading about his time in Corsica, reading that
(11:21):
note, he is a aggressive commander.
He is a charismatic commander. He loves to take risks.
He has a very clear way of strategic thinking that is not
always in line with the prevailing doctrine of the deck.
Good for him. He's also again, he is a larger
than life figure. You can you can just read it
immediately when you're reading the logs of Nelson versus the
(11:42):
logs of even his British compatriots.
Nelson is exciting. He is cool, right?
Like he has that Genesee Koala. He is he's a cool guy and even
you can see it at the time this the the his sailors are like, I
want to be on the cool guys ship, right?
This is this is really fun. That is not Villanova.
Villanova is not one of the coolguys.
(12:03):
He is not a bad commander though, right?
He is not in and of himself a herose to his position within the
French fleet not through just luck or incompetence.
Well, a little bit of luck did help.
Napoleon actually specifically says that's what you are.
You're a lucky guy. You're I'm going to, I'm going
to keep you around because you're lucky.
(12:23):
Because at various junctures in his naval career, he had just
gotten a little bit lucky. And maybe that skill, maybe
that's luck. And so he's in a position to get
lucky again. I.
Mean, he's a cautious guy. I know he's one of the few who
escaped the battle and now he got his ships out of there.
But I also know like, Napoleon'son like, his last straw with
(12:43):
him, like, with his timidity, like.
Right. He's frustrated at his won't sue
refusal. But you know, Napoleon's plan
really was wreck havoc in the West Indies to force a response
and then that we're going to getsomething out of that response.
And Villanoy doesn't do that. He hears that Nelson is chasing
him and so he runs and that's OK.
That's partly part of the plan is well, we drew the British out
(13:05):
now let me get back. Yep.
But then he's starting to go tryto break the fleet out at breast
and he gets into a battle against the British.
This is by salvo. Robert Calder comes in and this
is the battle of Cape Finester, right.
And this is like it's inconsequential doesn't really
actually do much for either sides, but villain wave runs
(13:26):
from it essentially and then he's like, I can't do it.
I can't I can't get you out of breast right.
Calder interestingly, also is court martialed later for his
lack of aggression, not cowardice, but lack of
aggression in this battle. Fascinatingly, he's taken away
from Nelson's fleet right beforethe eve of the battle.
He's like, you got to go, sorry,buddy, you got to go back to
England to face a court martial because you're not aggressive
(13:48):
enough. And like, I need this ship, I
need this guy. But he goes back.
So then Villanowave says, I don't, He doesn't say it quite
this way, but I think it's there.
I don't trust Napoleon's strategic sense.
He wants me to go to breast. I don't think I can do that.
I'm nervous. I'm nervous about what's going
to happen if I do that. So he goes down to Cadiz, and
(14:10):
that's where Napoleon says, OK, relieved of command, here's your
here's your replacement. I need somebody who will do what
I'm what I tell them to do, and that's not you.
And meanwhile there's Gravina, who I think is well respected,
but whatever reason he's not in charge.
He's not, he's not in charge because the Spanish are the
junior partners here, even though they bring a lot to the
(14:34):
alliance. There's no ambiguity at any
point in the Spanish and French relationship of who is who is
the little brother. And it's it's always the
Spanish. This goes from 1796 onwards when
they are making their the making, making peace with the
French and then having the alliance with the French.
(14:54):
It's always an unequal partnership.
And this was actually true when they were allied with the
British as well, right? When you look at Toulon in 1793,
when the British and the Spanishare allied together against the
French, the Spanish, again, no one respects them, which is
ironic in a lot of ways because at this point the Spanish
actually do have as much naval competence as the French do.
(15:16):
Then the French lost a lot of their naval experience, to put
it lack of a better term. They lost a lot of that
experience both because of the flight of the the officer corps,
the noble officer corps in the threat revolutionary era, but
also it's just a treated over time, right?
They don't. They have not had major naval
engagements and they've lost a lot of that experience.
(15:38):
The Spanish have lost some of that, but less so.
They should be more of a active partner, but because of alliance
reasons, they are the junior partner, no question.
Yeah. And the French ships, I mean the
French state, the finances have been poor for probably over a
decade. So the ships haven't been
maintained. Like you said, a lot of the
(15:58):
office corps emigrated away. So the French Navy isn't what it
once was. And I think that comes to bear
here shortly. So and the other interesting
thing that's worth noting right along that is one of the reasons
that both the French and the Spanish don't have as much
experience is because of the blockades that the British have
have put them under, right? This is the British do have
command of the sea at this point.
(16:19):
And you can see that by the evidence of the blockades that
they they have. When you are the blockading
ship, you are at sea, you are, you are constantly running
drills. You are, you're there.
It's good for the blockaded ship.
You're sitting a lot and any naval commander can tell you
that, you know, idleness is the death of rigor, right?
(16:40):
Like, and if you want to actually be have an effective
fighting ship, especially a in the age of sail, expertise
matters and they're getting lazy, they're getting bored.
They're they're at port, they'reblockaded, they don't have the
experience of actually doing naval battle.
Yeah. No, that's a really good point.
Well, it seems Villeneuve gets tipped off that he's going to be
(17:01):
replaced, so I think he's finally motivated to action.
What are the French? What are the forces involved?
How many does each side have in terms of ships and men and all
that kind of stuff? Yeah.
So you know, on the the simplestway of 30, we'll just say 33
ships of the line combined French and Spanish.
And it's worth noting that the French ships and the Spanish
(17:21):
ships in particular, they have bigger ships, they have more,
more cannons, unequivocally, they have some of the biggest
ships of the line that are, thatare at sea at that point.
And they're in this battle, right?
The British on the other side have 2727 ships of the line.
They are relatively unified. That's a big difference between
a joint command versus a unifiedcommand.
(17:43):
But sheer, in terms of sheer numbers, the British are
outgunned. There's no two ways about it in
terms of the the men involved. This is even more stark in a lot
of ways where the, the estimatesare around 30,000 French and
Spanish together, which that's alot of people on these ships,
right? That's it's a lot.
They are packed full, right? And interestingly, that's not,
(18:05):
they are not at full complement,particularly the Spanish are not
at full complement for, for thisbattle.
The British aren't really eitherthough.
They have 17,000 ships or men intheir combined together in their
ships. And they also are feeling some
of the burn of manning shortages.
But they are more competent and more confident in the people
that they have than the Spanish ISM French are.
(18:26):
Yeah. And so looking at it on paper,
before the battle begins, the French and Spanish have bigger
ships. They have more men.
And so I think that's all the more surprising.
Like, what happens? Like, it's just a route.
But before the battle, you're like, all right, well, this
might be a good battle, you know?
Right. And and this is, it's an
interesting like villain Wave wants to, he wants to go out and
take the battle after a fashion,right.
(18:47):
And like he, he, this is to yourpoint earlier that he is, he
knows he's going to be relieved and wants to, to, to put a lie
to the, the rumors of his cowardice or his
ineffectiveness. He's like, no, I can, I have a
bigger fleet. And that's part of the orders.
Part of the orders that he has is if you have, if you encounter
A numerically inferior British fleet, engage and destroy.
(19:09):
And so he's like, OK, like what,what do I have here?
A numerically inferior British fleet?
I'm going to. I'm going to join battle.
Do I actually think I'm going todestroy it?
Probably not. But I am going to join battle
with this numerically inferior fleet.
OK, so he rolls the dice. How does that begin on October
21st, 1805? What are the French and Spanish
(19:31):
doing? Yeah, So this is, this is a,
it's a, it's a really key momentgoing back to that discussion
about forces, about the British know they have fewer guns, but
they say our men are better. We are better at seamanship than
the French and the Spanish. So what we need to do is get in
close. We need to get in as close as we
can and just run, run, run, run roughshod over them.
(19:55):
The French and the Spanish, for their part, are anticipating A
relatively standard battle. They know that they that that
this is a tactic right when Nelson crossing the T as he
does, right? That's not something that is
completely like wow. I can't believe anybody would
ever do that. That's mind blowing.
It's a thing, right? It is a thing that can happen.
It's just not something that Villanuev thinks is going to
(20:18):
happen because they are so roughly comparable that you
don't need as far as his strategic calculus is is going,
you don't need to take big risks.
Nelson doesn't need to take a big risk in this fight.
He just needs to. They just need to need to shoot
each other a bunch and then whoever's cannonballs hit the
best is going to come out with more ships than the other side.
And that's it's just a normal day at sea, right?
(20:39):
Like no big deal. The again, you have so many
inconsequential naval battles that are are legitimate naval
battles that end in the fleets going their separate ways with
damage, right? That's what villain The Wave is
thinking. He's setting up for that.
He's setting up for just anotherday in the office.
We'll see what happens and let'sgo.
That's not what Nelson's settingup for.
(21:01):
Yeah, and I, I think you just hit upon it there, Bill, who
thinks there's going to be another day to, you know, we'll
lob some cannonballs on at them.They'll do the same to us, and
we'll go our opposite ways. Meanwhile, Nelson gives the
allegedly famous flag signal andspeech quote.
England expects that every man will do his duty.
End Quote. Why was he such a good motivator
of men? It really is hard to it's hard
(21:25):
to say it's hard to say what it is that makes Nelson Nelson
right. I will say that the two
immediate answers that come to mind.
One is he is incredibly competent himself, right?
He has displayed competence. He has he expects competence and
that that's a big part of it is you know what you're looking
for. So when the men he says expect
(21:46):
in this case, I expect you to doyour duty.
But this is a common theme all throughout his entire career is
saying I expect you to be amazing.
Why? Because I'm amazing.
I know what it looks like. I know what amazing looks like.
You, you can't fool me. Do your best and I'll know if
you're not. And that is enticing in a lot of
(22:07):
ways, right? Yeah, and I think there's
another part of it too, that theguy's missing an arm.
He has no sight, one eye. He's going to be like like
Napoleon or Marshall name. He's going to be at the
frontline with these guys battling.
Also, he's not going to be like and some flagship in the back
like, he's going to be right up there with him.
Exactly. Again, leading by example.
He's like, I expect you, my man.I expect you to do what I've
(22:28):
already done and what I continueto do.
I'm yes, it actually makes a lotmore strategic sense for him to
be middle or back, right, to be able to have a little bit more
vision. But no, he is.
That's arguable. There's there's value in leading
from the front, even from a naval engagement, just because
of the distances involved. But it's incredibly risky in
this scenario, as we will see, right?
(22:49):
But again, he says this is what I'm doing.
I am leading by example. So when he says I expect
everyone to do every, everyone to do their duty, there's this
implicit understanding of because I am right, if you
follow me, because I know where I'm going and I know what we're
supposed to be doing. And that is appealing to to his
men. And yeah, he is a
(23:11):
crystallization of the British pluck, right?
But also competence. And you can't disregard the fact
that he's his arrogance. And it's not really arrogance.
It's confidence that is not overconfident.
I mean, the battle of the Nile, right?
Like it over and over. He displays the fact that his
confidence in himself and in hismen is warranted.
Right. And I remember Wellington had
(23:32):
that meeting with him and he waslike, Oh my God, that's the most
arrogant person I've ever met inmy life.
But like you said, it's not arrogance if you've done
everything you've said. Accurate self-assessment, right.
That's what I that's what I tellpeople all the time.
I'm like, no, no, I just understand accurate
self-assessment. Yeah.
But the other thing that it mirrors in here, and this goes
(23:52):
even to the strategy. Not at least.
So the second to last message hegives is England expects that
every man will do his duty. He initially says confides that
every man will do his duty. But his signalman says, hey, I
don't feel like spelling that. Can I just do expects instead.
And Nelson's like, actually, that sounds better.
Yeah, go with it. I didn't know that.
That's awesome. Because expects is 1 signal
where as confides they would have had to do like CONFIDES.
(24:16):
So there actually is a made moresense.
But then he puts up another after that, everyone is like, Oh
yeah, cheering. And Collingwood, his other, the
commander of the other line says, of course I'm going to do
my duty kind of jokingly, like, no, that was a wasted message,
right? Like, of course we're going to
do our duty. But he says it kind of in good,
good humor. But then the next message that
(24:37):
he puts up is engage with the enemy more closely, and he
leaves that. That is the signal, right?
There is no other strategic guidance for his sailors.
It's engaged with the enemy moreclosely.
And this gets to that other element of why he's such a
compelling leader. He trusts his men, right?
He says, I gave you the vision. Like we met for dinner the night
(24:58):
before and I gave all my captains the vision.
Now it's on you guys to execute.I'm not going to micromanage.
I have confidence in you. Overconfidence maybe, but not in
this case, right? Like I have confidence that all
I need to do is tell you, go that way and you're going to
win. Yeah, yeah, and Napoleon did
that too, too. I'm to a degree he micro, but he
(25:18):
he said, look, go take that hillby 9:15.
AMI don't care how you do it. I'm going to leave that to you,
but that's what I expected. Yep, Engage with the enemy more
closely. Like I love, I love that line
because you can see so often in,even in naval battles where
going back to Clausefitz, right,fog and friction emerges and you
see this, that Nelson is planning for this, he says.
Implicit in that is I know I'm not going to be able to give
(25:41):
orders once, once this actually gets crazy.
My whole strategy is predicated on not being able to give orders
because I don't want the other guy to be able to give orders
too. And when we go head to head, my
guys are better. And that's that's the strategic
thinking is predicated on manipulating fog and friction
and using his own skill and the the skill of his sailors to win
(26:02):
the day. Let's talk about the opening
engagement around noon, Nelson'sColumn.
And I know we don't have maps onthis show.
We're just going to describe it to you best mentally as we can.
You're seeing the video now. We have our hands up.
But yeah, Nelsons column attacksthe French.
Excuse me, Franco Spanish centerand rear while Colleen Woods
column engaged the enemies van. What happens from there?
(26:25):
So again, this is very much according to plan for Nelson.
They split the they split the the Spanish Franco Spanish line
in three and where the when Nelson goes in and they pretty
much immediately gets caught in a in a nasty fight with the the
the French or the other French ships.
I believe it's his villain the way of ship at that point.
(26:46):
They get caught in a nasty fight, but they punch a hole
through the Spanish line. Now the risk of this and just to
to to give a little bit of why crossing the T, everyone knows
that it can be done, but it is areally risky thing to do.
The risk of this is that Nelson's ship, while it's
sailing towards the line is justgetting slammed by cannon fire
(27:06):
that he can't realistically respond to and nor can the ships
behind him realistically respondto this barrage that is coming
from nearly the entirety of the Franco Spanish line.
It is really risky. Right, because the front of the
ship doesn't have cannons on it,right.
So it's. Two at best, right?
He's got to get through it before he can fire.
Once he gets through, the tables, turn right.
(27:30):
Good seamanship matters because one of the calculations that
goes into Nelson's thinking is that it's pretty poor sea
conditions. It's not horrible, but it's
pretty rough seas. So the ships are going up and
down, right? And so that makes it really hard
to for the Spanish to hit. They're trying to gauge the
height of the ships on these rolling seas.
And a lot sometimes though, the cannonballs are going straight
(27:52):
into the water, sometimes far overhead.
So there are other myth ways that Nelson is mitigating the
risks that this strategy entails.
And Villanuev did not anticipatethat this was the strategy that
he was going to do. So once he punches through the
line, chaos, that's that's what happens next is really chaos,
deliberate chaos from the British side.
But the ships keep funneling through that brake, splitting
(28:16):
off and keeping the brake the line broken apart and making it
so that there can be no cohesiveresponse from the Spanish or the
the French. Yeah, and I think again, you,
you raise a good point. It's more than just having the
most cannons or the most men. It's, you know, how fast can you
reload? How good are you at aiming on a
rocky sea? I agree to you at like keeping
the sails up to catch the wind. And like you said, if you're at
(28:38):
port and you haven't trained to do all these things, maybe
you're just not as good as the English.
By some estimates and I'm alwaysa little bit when when people
sit and when, when you get the reports of the battle afterwards
from the the people who were at the battle, like the Spanish and
the French are like, it seemed like the guns never stopped
firing, right? They were always going.
You know, they at some point they there is a reload time,
(29:01):
right? Sure.
But by most estimates, let's sayit's a three to one right that
this the British were getting three shots to every once one
shot of the the Spanish and French.
And that that estimate that we had earlier 33 to 27, if you
triple the 27, because it's not just about the ships, it's about
how fast they can shoot their cannons, right?
(29:21):
And if you make it so that they are shooting three times as
fast, all of a sudden that 27 starts looking a little bit like
60. And the Spanish feel outgunned.
The French feel outgunned, even though they they technically
worked. Yeah, well we're engaged now.
Furious close quarters fighting British ships like HMS Victory
(29:43):
and Royal Sovereign are at pointblank range and quickly it seems
the British are dominating. How's how's this possible?
Just everything we're saying Or why aren't the French inflicting
as much damage, I guess. The two factors that come out
here 1 is they didn't expectations, right?
This was something that the British planned to do and the
(30:04):
French did not plan to do it. And so they are looking for
additional guidance. All Nelson said was engage more
closely, right? That's all the guidance he
needed to give. And at that, you know, he left
them again, he left it up the entire time.
What are my orders? Engage more closely.
The Spanish and the French are like, what are my orders?
And they're looking around and the line is split.
It's messy, right? You can't see anything.
(30:24):
And so there's just a delayed response.
Now in the actual hand to hand fighting that takes place
because you do get, you know, you're getting the, the, the,
the masts and the yard arms. They're getting tangled together
in various cases as well. And this is where, yes, there
should be a little bit more parity, but I don't want to put
too much weight in this. But I can't help but say that
(30:45):
the confidence of the men themselves, the yes, it's skill
as well. I think the British have more
skill at hand to hand fighting. They have more skill at
shipboard action. They have more, more skill
there. But I would argue that the
reason why you see such, I mean,it is a massive difference.
Confidence matters so much. So that is to me, the biggest
(31:06):
explanation of why we see the massive amount of discrepancy
between what they should have done on the Franco Spanish side
and what they actually achieved on the British side.
Yeah, and by 1:15, you know, French ships are striking color.
Some are sinking, some are running away.
The Spanish are running away. It's over pretty quick.
(31:26):
It is, I would say it's over when, when the victory punches
through the Franco Spanish column and doesn't go down,
doesn't strike colors, doesn't falter.
Really at that point it was going to be very difficult for
the Franco, the French and Spanish to to win.
And that again, is partly why they act in the way they do is
because they know that I think they they can assess, they can
(31:50):
see on an individual sailor level and on a leadership level.
We need to probably run and theycan't because they're split and
they're. It's a complete mess.
Yeah, and it's really interesting.
You know, Nelson realizes, oh, my God, this is going to be my
greatest victory ever. And he's had a lot of victories.
But around this time, he's mortally wounded by a French
sharpshooter. And I have a lot of questions
(32:10):
about his death because, one, wedon't know who shot him.
We don't know. The French sharpshooter's name
is a mystery. Muskets of the age are
notoriously inaccurate. Do you think this anonymous
sharpshooter was aiming for Nelson?
And do you think the Sharpshire was one of the Killed in Action
casualties? You know what happened here.
I'll give you my again, this is this is my sense.
(32:32):
Do I know for sure? Of course not right.
But I do think there was probably aiming right.
I mean, this is one of the things that the French and then
the British did as well. But the French were were pretty
we're pretty good at was saying let's pick off the officers
right? Like this is command on a naval
vessel is very delicate, right. Where as we see in the kind of
(32:53):
the macro sense of the battle, once that command structure
dissolves, chaos ensues and fighting effectiveness is
reduced almost to a negligible state.
That's true in the microcosm of a ship as well.
On a micro level of once that command structure is gone, if no
ones giving the order to fire, your cannons are probably going
to sit pretty quiet right now. The British have had have ways
(33:13):
of mitigating this knowing that that's a vulnerability they they
drill in the chain of command. So this is not something that in
this case it was not going to bea huge vulnerability.
But this is the going in theory of why they are trying to pick
off as many officers as they can.
Now. Does he see that it's Nelson?
I would have to say probably he's a distinctive figure and he
(33:35):
lived. He looms in the French
imagination, just as he does in the British imagination.
The nature of the industry, because he doesn't die right off
the bat, like I think it goes into his spine.
They have to bring him below deck.
I've been on the Victory. They have the the spot where
Nelson fell and you go down and I'm a pretty tall guy and I'm
actually shorter than Hardy Thomas, Captain Hardy, I'm
(33:56):
shorter than him. And like, you know, this would
be not very comfortable to be down here.
It's why he was up on deck all the time, I guess.
But yeah, this, it was absolutely a lucky shot.
And I would bet that either the person who shot did not know.
It was just, I don't know that Ihit Nelson, right?
I shot at an officer. It was chaos.
There was a lot of stuff. Did I hit him?
(34:17):
I saw him go down. Maybe that was shrapnel.
I don't know. There's so much, so much stuff
going on that it's likely that no one was going to be able to
definitively say in that moment that was my shot.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. There's quite a male stream of
cannonballs and musket balls flying around and stuff blowing
up. Right.
And you have you likely have 5 people taking the same shot and
(34:38):
most of the time none of them are hitting.
When one hits, you're not going to know exactly who's who's
who's hit. Well, you mentioned Hardy.
What were Nelsons final moments like?
Yeah, he knows that, his backbone says.
They got me through the backbone, right?
My backbone shot is gone and he knows that there's there's
likely no, no coming back from that.
(34:58):
So sometimes you get trapped into thinking, oh, well, Nelson
was the captain of the HMS Victory.
No, Nelson was the Admiral and then Hardy was the captain,
right? Hardy ran the ship, Nelson ran
the fleet. So he and Hardy had a a very
close relationship, a very closerelationship.
We're good friends and good, good colleagues.
So when Nelson is shot, he, you know, Hardy almost immediately
(35:19):
comes to him and Nelson is stilltrying to get a sense of what's
going on. Like have we won?
I think we're doing pretty good.But I I can't see right now.
He's still getting trying to getthese updates as they're taking
him down below decks to get him into more comfortable and to get
him whatever help they can. He sees one of the the tiller,
one of the two guys at the tiller and he's like, oh, no,
you need to, you know, do this instead of that.
(35:41):
And he's trying to help out again, that competence of he is
looking around while in excruciating pain, been trying
to do everybody's jobs for them in a bit of an arrogant way, but
also in a way that endears him to people of like, don't worry,
Sir, I got this right. You got other things to worry
about. And yeah, it's hot, it's messy.
He's asking for fans. He's asking for drinks.
(36:03):
Like he's in a lot of pain, a lot of pain.
But at the very end, about 2:30 where I believe it's Hardy that
says victory is complete, right?We like the kind of the the
metric that he gives is, you know, 15 of the 33 ships have
struck their colors and none of ours have, right?
That is the devastating completevictory that Nelson that was
(36:24):
that was already already essentially a done deal.
And that was what Nelson wanted.He was like, I am going for the
knockout blow. Back to that original question
of why does this loom so large in the public imagination?
He went for the knockout blow and he hit it right.
But he's below decks and he hears this and he, you know,
theoretically his his last words.
Thank God I've done done my duty.
(36:47):
I think this is probably not actually the last words.
If I had to guess, that's put inafterwards as like part of the
legend. What I choose to believe are his
last words is the one the last words that we do know
definitively that are recorded are kiss me hard, right, which
is kind of spawned some like, Oh, well, maybe maybe there's
more going on there. But this is I would read it as a
pretty clearly kind of brotherlyaffection of, you know, I'm I'm
(37:10):
I'm dying, right, You know, and you want.
Your best friend close to you and yeah.
Exactly. And, you know, Hardy leans down,
gives him a, gives him a kiss onthe forehead and, and, you know,
Nelson passes away. He may have murmured at the end.
You know, thank God I've done myduty.
I think that's possible. If that, if that happened, good
for him. I think it's more likely that in
that final moment, he is in thatmoment happy to know that his
(37:33):
duty has been done. Well, let's discuss the
aftermath and the outcome of thebattle.
As you mentioned before, I thinkBritish victory is total 22
Franco Spanish ships were captured or destroyed.
No British ships are lost. Do we know how many men died on
each side or were casualties? It's on the, it's a, it's a
very, it's a very, very small amount for the British, let's
(37:57):
say for the French and Spanish, it's around 4000 killed in
action with another 7:00-ish taken prisoner, 7000 taken
prisoner. I mean, honestly, that's a,
that's a massive killed in action account for an or killed
in action number for a naval battle.
You can get a lot of casualties when the ships go down.
But because usually it is just aclear like, OK, we've lost
(38:20):
disengage and this one there, itwas very difficult for them to
disengage. So for the British, the about
1500 is the high and that's total killed and wounded.
It's a lot less killed and 500 killed with about 1000 wounded.
You know, there's some difficulty in assessing all of
this, but general numbers about a right around there.
Yes, it's almost like a 5 or 6 to 1 ratio.
(38:43):
I mean, it's, it's, yeah, bad Napoleon's reaction.
And we have to discuss what happens to Bill Noove allegedly
in prison later. What is Napoleon's thought of
all this? So Napoleon obviously not well
pleased, but it's also importantto note that he's already called
off the invasion, right? Trafalgar is a not an
(39:03):
afterthought. But as far as the invasion of
Britain goes, there is not goingto be an invasion of Britain in
1805. Does not matter if the tables
are turned right, like if, if the Franco Spanish fleet has as
much success as the British one did, right.
If you completely flip the tables now, eventually in that
case, yes, Britain would have been invaded because command of
the Seas would have been lost. But regardless, those troops
(39:26):
that had been on the border of the English Channel, they were
at at Ulm and then Austerlitz, right?
Like they were gone. Yeah, doing really impressive
things for the record. So Napoleon's reaction to this
is certainly frustration at Villanuev, frustration at the
the loss, recognizing that this was probably one of the best
shots that he had, if not the best opportunity in a specific
(39:49):
battle. That from here, rebuilding the
the fleet to be able to contest sea power was going to be
incredibly difficult. It's not to say he doesn't,
right? He does invest in naval
rearmament and rebuilding so that he doesn't completely give
it up to the British, right? But from this point, his
strategy to attack Britain fundamentally changes, becomes
far more economic and diplomaticas opposed to.
(40:12):
Military. What happens to our friend?
They'll knew though. Yeah, he is.
So he's captured now, Gravina, for the record, he has his arm
shattered and dies from his wounds just to kind of close
that. He dies about six months later.
When he dies, he kind of says, you know, I'll be in the company
of Nelson, right? He has this honorable end, as
opposed to Illinois, who does not necessarily have nearly as
(40:36):
honorable of an end he is. I don't want to say he's a
scapegoat because I actually think he is to blame for a lot
of this, right? Well, yeah, I'm going to ask you
that too. Like when we Monday morning
quarterback it, like what percentage is Villeneuve at
Fuller? Obviously Napoleon has some
fault in it. So yeah, Villanoy, if he he, he
makes the wrong call in that he sails out and and Gavina says we
(40:58):
shouldn't sail out, right? We should wait for
reinforcements. Even something as is not, it's
not insignificant that there just been a bout of yellow
fever. Anytime you go to the Caribbean,
you're going to probably have some yellow fever.
And that happened for the FrancoSpanish fleet.
And so Gravina at the very leastis saying that let's just
recover and then go out. These things are are not in our
favor. And in a way of says, no, we're
going out. That's a bad decision.
(41:19):
When faced with Nelson, though, when faced with kind of the the
really pretty spectacular leadership that Nelson provides,
it's hard to say that there would have been a different
outcome, right? So if if you put Grovina instead
of Villain Wave, all that Matt, all that changes is that the
battle doesn't take place right then.
But I do blame Villain Wave for that decision to engage in an
(41:43):
unfavorable scenario and thinking that he was going to
have what we call a cooperative adversary, right?
That your, your adversary is going to think in the same way
that you do and do what you wantthem to do.
Nelson was an uncooperative adversary and Villain Wave made
very poor assumptions thinking that it was going to go his way.
Well. Then he makes another bad
decision. The British release him from
(42:03):
captivity and for some unknown reason he goes back to France.
That's the last place I would have gone, yeah.
Yeah, Yeah, I don't it's hard toread whether he is a a true
believer or not, right. You know, this is this is one of
those those difficult things to assess.
You know, he is in the Navy before the French Revolution
drops the noble affectation during the French Revolution
stays in again is lucky at the Nile, things like that.
(42:26):
But he's he's committed, right. And I would say, I would go so
far as to say that he is a patriot, right?
He is someone who is not just init for his own personal
aggrandizement or wealth. He's in it because he believes
in believes in in France. And therefore to a certain
extent we can say believes in Napoleon, right?
That France is under like he's he's, he wants to be part of
(42:47):
this vision and his patriotism is not valued, put it that way.
And ultimately likely commit suicide at the end.
Right. Yeah.
Napoleon throws him in prison. They find him dead in his cell.
I mean, you can conspiracy talk that Napoleon had him killed.
Whatever. I, I lean towards the, the
Occam's raism simpler explanation that he was a
patriot who came home wanting todo what he could, was thrown
(43:10):
into prison, said your services are not just not needed, but you
are not what we want and we wantto erase your memory.
And that that cognitive dissonance resulted in him
saying, well, I have nothing. I, I have nothing to live for.
I've lived for this country. I've lived for this Navy for
most of my life. And if they if I can't live for
that, then what is there worth living for, right?
(43:32):
Let's talk strategic consequences.
Obviously this ends in Napoleon's hope of invading
Britain. Establishes British naval
supremacy for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars, as you alluded
to at the beginning of our podcast.
Secures British naval superiority for the next 100
years. Is that accurate?
I mean, I guess it is in Europe at least.
Maybe. Maybe it is worldwide.
I mean, it's not that no one else sails, right?
(43:55):
And this is kind of one of the things that it matters what you
do with it. When you have that power, when
you have that, that command of the sea, what do you do with it
matters? And the British could have said
we are going to be heavy-handed.But really what they did was go
into the 19th century and establish their 19th century
version of imperialism through alittle bit similar to what the
United States does in terms of the freedom of navigation,
(44:17):
saying we are going to benefit most from free seas.
And so we want to protect the freedom of the Seas.
If you want to try to contest that, you're going to have to
contend with the greatest Navy of the time.
And we are going to grow our empire because we are just
better. We we have more, we have more
ships, we have a head start. We have all of this in our back
pocket. So what you do with that control
(44:37):
matters. But it was Trafalgar that
established that control. Well, I guess final question is
what is the legacy of Trafalgar?I mean, it is a very important
battle, but it doesn't really stop Napoleon.
He goes on for another 10 years.So it's, it's not like a
Waterloo or a it's a clinching victory, but does it alter the
overall strategic situation? I was talking with someone about
(44:59):
Napoleon and talking about the fact that Napoleon didn't lose
hardly any battles and was like,well, what about Trafalgar?
Like Napoleon didn't lose Trafalgar.
Like that wasn't Napoleon's. Well, there's a little bit of
Napoleon's fault in the sense that he was the head of state at
the time, but this was not a military loss that we're going
to pin on Napoleon. This is a military loss we're
going to pin on filling the wave, right?
So this is where that that dual bat for Napoleon gets really
(45:23):
interesting. He is the head of state.
And as head of state, he is ordering this as a military
maneuver. But this is not him being the
military head here. So does it change his military
ability? Does it change his military
ambitions? Owen, Austerlitz, Yena, like we
get some incredible, incredible military victories on the
continent that showcase that Napoleon is absolutely a force
(45:47):
to be reckoned with. But as I was thinking about this
podcast, reflecting on Trafalgar, one of the things
that I hit on that I hadn't actually hit on before was this
tension between Halford Mckinder, who has this Rimland
thesis, right, that the seat of power is a little bit Corbettian
as well in terms of naval theory.
But the seat of power is that land that if you want to have
(46:09):
geopolitical or geostrategic control, you need to control the
heartland and then contest the Rimlands.
That's that's Mckinder's thesis.Now, contrary to that is Alfred
Thayrmahan, who says if you wantto have political control,
especially if you're an island nation or a nation like the
United States, bounded on two sides by the sea, what you don't
need the heartland, You need thecommand of the sea.
(46:31):
You need sea lines of communication.
That's that's how you actually exert power and geopolitical
influence. And Trafalgar plays into that,
right, Because you have the British being having the
Mahanian vision of control. They can't actually do anything
on the continent for quite a while.
Napoleon has control of the continent, of the heartland.
And so you see these two visionsof what does power actually look
(46:54):
like and how do you actually utilize geopolitical power and
authority and position you see them in in the post Trafalgar
world where Napoleon is TRA is is ascendant on land and the
British are unchallenged at sea.And we see which one wins,
honestly. And I'm not just the Naval War
College homie here, right? Like this is like Napoleon
(47:15):
struggles with the fact that he cannot command the sea, whereas
the British struggle at times with the fact that they cannot
command the land, but find a wayto influence it nonetheless,
right? They do find a way to influence
what happens on land using the availability of sea power.
And so one of the legacies of Trafalgar in this broad sense is
(47:39):
a vindication. It's not a vindication because
Mahan comes much later, but it'salmost the the kernel of Mahan's
idea, the kernel of of a lot of the naval strategic thinking
that we have right now of how doyou turn naval power into long
lasting influence. Trafalgar is the template for
that. Trafalgar shows what's possible.
(47:59):
Like you recognize your bias there though.
That was good a little bit. I actually like Mckinder a lot.
I think he's got a lot of of value and and thinking about
Trafalgar. Trafalgar was so important to
Mahan and looking at what Napoleon does you can see
Mckinder kind of make some some claims there too.
And I think there's a legacy on on Nelson's part too, because
the guy personal wise had a lot of drama and scandal in this
(48:22):
end, even though he had all thatgoing on, his mistress and all
that. It's what a way to end like in a
like a blaze of glory with your finest victory.
Like, it's just incredible. It is and it is, it did become a
big part of the British mythos, right?
I mean, you go to Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, right?
That is the center point of London in a lot of ways.
(48:45):
It's it's so critical to who they are.
And and like I said earlier, it it helps that he didn't like he
had the drama, but he didn't actually do anything like he
didn't have the opportunity to, to ruin his reputation.
And I don't think he would have to be fair.
Nelson was a skilled operator ina lot of ways, but it gives the
the British something to latch onto in terms of the peak,
(49:08):
unadulterated, unsullied image of what it is to be British and
British at sea, right? Like Wellington is brilliant in
a lot of ways, but Wellington does not become that same, does
not have that same mythical quality.
And I think that's in no small part because he's a his army,
right? Like he's the identity marker is
not there for the British sense of self, whereas for Nelson it
(49:31):
is. And he goes on Wellington to
have mixed results, kind of as aPrime Minister.
And he lives a long life and maybe he just, he doesn't have
that glory that he had at Waterloo when that was the peak,
kind of like Nelson at the peak at Trafalgar.
If Wellington had died at Waterloo, you know, what a great
place of glory. But yeah, like if you live long
enough, maybe your star isn't asas impressive as it is at your
(49:52):
peak. Right.
And there is, you know, the British Navy becomes such a
core, right, core part of who they are and what their what
their power is and what their identity is.
I had been before that as well, but this solidified it and
rigidified it in a lot of ways that that you see last into the
20th century and even to certainextent still today, Right.
(50:13):
You know, the the Battle of Trafalgar is a essentially a,
you know, it's certainly a navalholiday and it's a it's a
holiday, yeah. Big part of who they are as a
nation. Yeah.
Well, thank you for that, Josh. Excellent overview of Trafalgar,
really good stuff. Again, Josh is going to appear
at Politics and Pros in Washington DC in October and
(50:35):
January if you want to go onlineand find that recommended.
And we thank him always for his time.
This is a fun, this is always fun.
Have a blast. And hopefully, hopefully I
didn't make too many hand movements for those who are who
are just listening. I just stick you late wildly.
But yeah, always, always fun. Hope this was useful.
Yeah, yeah. And again, we'll put all
(50:56):
episodes online on YouTube, all the videos that we record to go
on YouTube. If you don't have Spotify, you
want to see the videos, please check out our YouTube channel.
And yeah, Josh Meeks, thanks so much, bud.
Have a good one.
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