Chapter IV: Time of Trial and Triumph (2)

10. The results of Nelson's victory were highly important. In giving England the command of the Mediterranean, it utterly spoiled Bonaparte's design. He came to conquer Egypt, because he regarded that country as the gate to India and as a kind of jumping-off place from which to attack our Eastern possessions. But the loss of the French fleet left him and his army stranded in Egypt without the means of drawing supplies from France. Bonaparte did not at once give up all hope of reaching India. He crossed the desert into Syria, but was brought to a standstill before the walls of Acre. And on trying to take the place by storm, his troops were hurled back by the Turkish garrison, with the aid of a small British squadron under Sir Sidney Smith. Bonaparte was wont to say, in later days, that but for Sidney Smith, he might have died Emperor of the East.

11. To the victory of the Nile we also owe our possession of Malta; for the destruction of the French Mediterranean fleet left our ships free to blockade, without serious hindrance, the harbour of Valetta, and to starve out the French garrison by whom it was held. Thus fell into our hands one of the strongest links of the chain that binds India to England, and what is regarded--from its strong fortress, excellent harbour, and central situation---the best naval station in the Mediterranean.

(8) NELSON'S CROWNING VICTORY.

1. Napoleon hastened back from Egypt to France at the first opportunity, and being raised to supreme power took measures for building a strong fleet. This he viewed as the first step towards the invasion of England. He next collected an immense flotilla of flat-bottomed boats at Boulougne, to transport an invading army across the Channel. His troops were eagerly awaiting the signal to embark, like hounds straining at the leash with the hare in sight.

2. Napoleon knew that the only chance of getting his army across "the silver streak" was to get command of the Channel for at least a few hours. With this end in view, he had induced Spain to join him, and devised a scheme for the union of all the French and Spanish men-of-war and their sudden appearance in the Channel. But the best-laid schemes often go awry, and so did this one. The allied fleets did, indeed, come together, but not in the Channel. They were encountered by a British fleet under Nelson, off Cape Trafalgar.

3. The battle of Trafalgar, fought on the 21st October, 1805, is one of the most famous sea-fights on record. The allies mustered thirty-three battleships, the British twenty-seven. Nelson arranged the general order of battle with his captains some days beforehand. He drew up his ships, on the fateful day, in two columns, placing himself at the head of one column in the _Victory_, whilst Admiral Collingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_ took the lead in the other. The allies received the attack with their ships arranged in a single irregular line, stretching from north to south in front of the harbour of Cadiz.

4. Nelson arranged that the two British columns should advance parallel to each other, and bear down on the enemy at right angles to their line. Collingwood was to break through the line near the centre and engage the ships forming the rear to the south; Nelson himself undertook to break through the line, also near the centre, and so dispose his forces as to leave unengaged ten or a dozen of the enemy's ships forming the van, to the north. By the time these ships tacked so as to come into action, it was hoped that the day would be decided, the allied ships in the centre and rear having had to bear the whole brunt of the attack made by the entire British fleet.

5. Having made all arrangements for the approaching fight, Nelson went down into his cabin to pray. The words of his prayer, written on his knees in his private diary, the last he ever penned, ran thus:--

"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen, Amen, Amen."

6. Then our hero appeared on deck ready for anything that might befall him. Just before going into action he issued the famous signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty." The ships of the three nations now hoisted their colours, and the admirals their flags. Nelson wore, as usual, his admiral's frock coat, on the left breast of which were stitched the stars of four different orders. The officers on board the flagship saw these stars with dismay, knowing as they did that the enemy's ships swarmed with soldiers, many of whom were sharpshooters, and that the action would be at close quarters. But none dared to advise their chief to make himself less conspicuous.

7. The _Royal Sovereign_ was the first to reach the enemy's line. As the _Victory_ at the head of the second column advanced, she became the target of all the ships in the enemy's centre. For forty minutes she had to endure the hail of the enemy's shot in silence, her speed continually getting less as one sail after another was stripped from the yards. Despite her injuries the _Victory_ continued to forge ahead, and at last her bows crossed the wake of the French flag-ship, by whose stern she passed within thirty feet. Now spoke the double-shotted guns of the _Victory_, as they passed in succession the French admiral's ship, their shots raking the vessel from stern to stem. Twenty guns were at once dismounted and a hundred men laid low.

8. The _Victory_, passing on, brought up alongside the _Redoubtable_. The rigging of the two ships got entangled so that they lay side by side, with their guns almost mouth to mouth. Both ships were soon on fire. The flames, however, were soon extinguished, but the fury of battle grew fiercer. Marksmen in the rigging of the French ship shot down at the officers and men on the deck of the _Victory_. The figure of a one-armed officer, with epaulettes on his shoulders and stars upon his breast, attracted the notice of one of these marksmen. The man fired, and the ball shot through epaulette and shoulder and lodged in the spine. The wounded Nelson fell into Captain Hardy's hands, saying, "They have done for me at last."

9. Nelson was carried to the cockpit with his handkerchief over his face and breast, so that the crew might not become discouraged by observing his fate. The dying hero, an hour or two later, sent for his friend Hardy, but he was unable to leave the deck for some time. "Well, Hardy," said Nelson, when at last he appeared, "how goes the battle?" "Very well, my lord; we have got twelve or fourteen of the enemy's ships already in our possession." "I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy." "No, my lord, there is no fear of that." Nelson then said, "I am a dead man, Hardy. I am going fast" .... "I feel something rising in my breast," he said, somewhat later, "which tells me I am gone. God be praised, I have done my duty." The last words audible were, "God and my country."

10. By the time firing ceased, near sunset, seventeen of the enemy's ships had struck, and one, with the tri-coloured ensign still displayed, was burning to the water's edge. Our boats used every effort to save the brave fellows who had so gloriously defended her; but only two hundred and fifty were rescued, and she blew up with a tremendous explosion.

11. Nelson's victory secured for Britain the undisputed sovereignty of the seas, freed her from all fear of invasion, ensured the safety of the seas to her merchantmen, and threw a strong shield over her colonial possessions. When Nelson died, his work was done, his mission ended; but yet he has not ceased to be a source of living power, "he being dead yet speaketh." Wherever danger has to be faced and duty done, at cost to self and for the sake of fatherland, there the name and deeds of Nelson still speak with an uplifting force.

12. It is interesting to know that Nelson's splendid services and his mournful death are still commemorated in the Royal Navy by certain details, in each blue-jacket's dress, with which we are all familiar. The three rows of white braid on the collar recall the three greatest of Nelson's victories--the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar; whilst the black silk handkerchief, worn by each sailor, reminds him of the sad occasion when it was first assumed in token of mourning for the fallen hero in the hour of victory.

(9) INDIA'S NEW MASTERS.

1. Whilst Nelson was sweeping the French war-ships off the ocean, and securing for Britain the sovereignty of the seas, the Marquess Wellesley was turning every French soldier out of India, and making British rule supreme in that country. Wellesley held office as governor-general of India between 1798 and 1805, the years of Nelson's victories of the Nile and Trafalgar. The former victory relieved Wellesley of all fear of a French invasion of India, and left him free to deal with the native princes, who had now nothing to rely upon but their own resources.

2. The time had now come for England to make herself the mistress of India. During the last hundred years the Mogul Empire had gone more and more to pieces, and now the old emperor was a prisoner in the hands of one of the Mahratta princes. It was in the interests of good government that one power should arise strong enough to keep all the others in order, and with a sense of justice keen enough to hold the balance fairly between them. Our governor-general did not for a moment doubt that the power best qualified for giving the law to India was the British, and he resolved, if possible, to make that power supreme.

3. Wellesley's plan was to separate the states under native princes from each other by encircling them with a ring of British territory, like so many islands surrounded by the sea, and to gain possession of the sea coasts so as to exclude all foreign foes. His first aim was to destroy all French influence. His watchword, like Nelson's, was "Down with the French," who at that time, we must remember, were trying, under Napoleon, to enslave all Europe. Many of the Indian princes had French soldiers in their pay, by whom their armies were trained. The Marquess began his great task by persuading our ally, the Nizam of the Deccan, to dismiss his French officers, and these he packed off home by the next ship. The sepoys whom they had drilled were disbanded, and then induced to take service under British officers.

4. The Nizam thus became a dependent ally. He was still master in his own domains, and over his own people, but he could no longer make war or form alliances, on his own account, with other princes. He had, in fact, bartered his independence for protection. In any attack from another state he was assured of being defended, if need be, by the whole force of British India. This system of protected states made great progress whilst Wellesley held office.

5. The princes who put themselves under British protection were expected to receive one of our officials at his court, and to be guided by his advice. They were also required to admit British troops as a part of their standing army. And when they complained of the cost of their maintenance, the Marquess offered to accept a slice of their territory and to pay the troops out of its revenues. This may seem sharp practice, but it worked well in the interests of the Hindoos who came under our rule. The ceded districts soon became the home of an industrious population, who looked to British officials for justice, and looked not in vain.

6. Before Wellesley had been five years in office the whole of Southern India, the whole plain of the Ganges, and a strip along the whole of the eastern coast were under the direct rule of the British or their dependent allies. The Mahratta princes alone were capable of doing much mischief, and the time had now come to put an end, if possible, to the bloodshed and ruin that followed the track of their horsemen. With two of the Mahratta princes the Marquess came to terms without fighting; with the remaining three he went to war. Having organized two armies, he placed one under the command of General Lake to invade the northern part of the Mahratta dominions, and the other under the command of his brother, Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, to wage war in the southern part of their territory.

7. "The hero of a hundred fights" won his first great victory at Assaye, in the Nizam's dominions, which the Mahrattas had invaded. With a force of 5000 men he defeated the enemy, numbering, it is said, eight to one. The English general took advantage of the junction of two rivers, near Assaye, to place his little army in the angle between them, so as to be open to attack only in front. But to get into this position it was necessary to cross one of the rivers, and his guide assured him there was no ford by which the passage could be made.

8. Going forward to see for himself, General Wellesley observed that two villages stood facing each other on opposite banks of the river. "I immediately said to myself," he tells us, "that men could not have built two villages facing one another on opposite sides of a stream without some means of passing from one to the other. And I was right. I found a passage, crossed my army over. And there I fought and won the battle, the bloodiest for the numbers that I ever saw."

"This is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clash'd with his fiery few and won."

9. Meanwhile, General Lake was equally successful at the other end of the Mahratta's dominions. After a great but costly victory, he entered Delhi in triumph, and delivered the old emperor from his long captivity. Wellesley nominally restored him to the throne and set apart £150,000 a year for his maintenance; but from this time the Emperor of India was merely a pensioner in the pay of the British and under British control, forbidden even to go beyond the walls of Delhi, where the "Great Moguls" formerly gave the law to the whole of India. The real masters of India, from this time, were the British.

10. Marquess Wellesley's work in India was now done. He had attained every object he proposed to himself. The last of the French officers in native employ had disappeared from India; there was no corner of the coast left on which a Frenchman could land. He not only made Britain from this time the supreme power, but by his system of protected states--separated from each other, and fenced round by British territory--he did much to place that power on a firm and lasting basis.

(10) WELLINGTON AND NAPOLEON.

1. In the great war with Napoleon, as our fleets were led to victory by Nelson, so were our armies by Wellington. The scene of his battles and sieges were, with one exception, the peninsula of Spain and Portugal, and on this account the war in which he was engaged, between 1808 and 1814, is called the _Peninsular War_. When Wellington began his Peninsular campaigns, Napoleon was practically the master of Europe. Some of the nations he had crushed, others he had overawed or won over to his side, all were either his humble servants or his forced allies.

2. Napoleon had already been crowned Emperor of France, and his amazing successes on the continent caused him to dream of Europe as an empire, with Napoleon as its emperor, and Paris as its capital. But there was one nation near his own doors that stood in his way, and whom he would fain have struck to the ground, had his arm been long enough to reach across "the silver streak." England might, perhaps, after the victory at Trafalgar, have held aloof from the strife which turned all Europe into a battle-field; she might, perhaps, have lived in ease and security in her island-home, and left the less-favoured nations on the continent to be trampled under the heel of the conqueror; but she nobly chose to stand forth and take the lion's share in the war against the tyrant.

3. Hence arose the Peninsular War which, with varying success, was persevered in for years as the most effectual way of draining the life-blood of France. That war was to France like a running sore. Napoleon sent his best generals, one after another, to put an end to the war by driving the British out of the country. To Marshal Soult he wrote, "You are to advance on the English, pursue them without ceasing, beat them and fling them into the sea. The English alone are formidable--they alone." But the English refused to be flung into the sea. On the contrary, it was the French that had, in the end, to take their flight homeward.

4. In the course of his seven campaigns in the Peninsula, Wellington found the tide of success ebb and flow. Sometimes he was able to advance and drive the enemy before him, sometimes he was compelled to retreat and stand on the defensive; but whether advancing or retiring he suffered no disaster, he lost no pitched battle. Much of Wellington's success was due to the solidity and steady discipline of his troops, still more perhaps to his own military skill and personal character. By patience and perseverance, by careful attention to details, by never letting a chance slip by, by never sparing himself, by making "duty" his watch-word; by such plain, homely virtues our Wellington fought and won. "Wellington dazzled no one," says a French writer, "but he beat us all the same." After being routed at Vittoria, in 1813, the French were compelled to beat a hasty retreat across the Pyrenees, and to seek safety in France.

5. In the meanwhile, Napoleon's great army of 400,000 men had perished in Russia, and in the retreat from the burning city of Moscow. Henceforth, Napoleon is like a hunted lion whom his enemies were gradually gathering round so as to cut off his retreat and encage him. At length, in 1814, the fallen emperor resigned his crown, and retired to the little island of Elba, which was to serve as his prison.

6. Wellington's work now seemed crowned with success, but really a greater task was in front of him. In March, 1815, the world was startled to hear that the lion encaged at Elba had made his escape, and was now at large in France. Owing to the return, since the peace, of some 200,000 of his veterans from the prisons of Germany, Napoleon was soon at the head of a powerful army. All Europe flew to arms. The first to encounter his troops were the British and the Prussians.

7. In the great battle of Waterloo (18th June, 1815), the fate of Napoleon was finally decided. It was the first time Napoleon had witnessed the unflinching courage and stubborn solidity of British troops, and ere the battle began had only mocked at Soult when he declared, "They will die rather than quit the ground on which they stand." With his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon ceased to be the central figure of the civilised world. He was banished to the Isle of St. Helena, and there he died after six years spent in darkly brooding over his broken fortunes.

8. On Napoleon's fall, the nations of Europe entered on a long peace. A congress was held between the great powers at Vienna, and the map of Europe redrawn, France being thrust back within her ancient borders. During the war England had seized the Colonial possessions of France. Those of Holland shared the same fate, for she had thrown in her lot with her powerful neighbour. The war had cost Britain a vast sum of money and many thousands of lives but she now received large additions to her empire.

9. By the Treaty of Vienna, Britain was allowed to retain what is now called _British Guiana_, _Ceylon_, and the _Cape of Good Hope_, all of which she had taken from Holland. She also obtained the island of _Mauritius_, which, lying on the sea-route to India, had long enabled the French to strike a blow at our Indian trade and possessions. The islands of _Trinidad_ and _Tobago_ in the West Indies also fell to her share, and above all the island of _Malta_, placed like a watch-tower in the centre of the Mediterranean, the central sea of the civilised world.

10. Nor do these important additions to the empire include all the fruits of victory in the course of the great war with Napoleon. An Australian writer tells us that the Australian colonies are apt to think of these Napoleonic wars as matters having no direct bearing on their concerns. But in reality, as he reminds them, Australia was made British on the shores of Europe. What Hawke and Wolfe did for Canada, Nelson and Wellington did for Australia. We owe it to Trafalgar and Waterloo that the island-continent to-day is free and peaceful from end to end, instead of being parcelled out among nations of different races, all jealous of one another. We owe it to the success of our arms, under Nelson and Wellington, that when in later years the French asked how much of the Australian continent we claimed, our Minister could say, "The whole," without their being able to say "Nay."

11. We usually associate peace with plenty; but such was not the first results of the long peace which followed the victory at Waterloo. The war had given employment to thousands who now found wherever they turned for work, a notice staring them in the face, "No more hands wanted here." One great advantage to our colonies arose from this state of things. Finding it impossible to make a living in the old country, large numbers in the first years of the peace emigrated to the colonies, where brawny arms were in great demand, and where food was cheap and plentiful. We shall presently follow the fortunes of our countrymen who now go forth to plant nations on the shores of Australia, to people the valleys of Tasmania, to share New Zealand with the Maoris, to take possession of South Africa and lay there the foundation of a great state,--driven across the seas by

"Such wind as scatters young men through the world
To seek their fortunes further than at home,
Where small experience grows,"