Villeneuve as
he was, he detached the "Royal Sovereign" from his own squadron, and
placed her under Knight's command. It only remains to add that the
expedition reached its destination in safety and that its result was the
Battle of Maida, fought in the following year--the first battle in which
Napoleon's troops crossed bayonets with British infantry and were beaten
by an inferior force. The expedition was also the indirect cause of the
Battle of Trafalgar itself, for it was in order to frustrate the
coalition with Russia of which it was the instrument that Napoleon had
ordered Villeneuve to make for the Mediterranean when he finally left
Cadiz to encounter Nelson on his path. Thus was it, as Mr Corbett says,
"to prove the insidious drop of poison--the little sting--that was to
infect Napoleon's empire with decay and to force his hand with so
tremendous a result."

Yet it very nearly miscarried at the outset. Nelson and Barham--between
them a combination of warlike energy and strategic insight, without a
parallel in the history of naval warfare--both realized the tremendous
risks it ran. It may be argued that had Villeneuve gone to the north he
would have found himself in the thick of British squadrons closing in on
Brest and vastly superior in force. Yet Allemand, who had escaped a few
weeks later from Rochefort, was able to cruise in these very waters for
over five months without being brought to book. It is true that the
destruction or capture of five thousand British troops would not
seriously have affected the larger issues of the naval campaign, but it
would have broken up the coalition with Russia by which Pitt set so much
store, and which Mr Corbett at any rate represents as having exercised a
decisive influence on the ultimate fortunes of Napoleon. The moral of
the whole story seems to be that competent strategists--for the world
has known none more competent and none more intrepid than Nelson and
Barham--will not risk even a minor expedition at sea unless its line of
advance is sufficiently controlled by superior naval force to ensure its
unmolested transit. The principle thus exhibited in the case of a minor
expedition manifestly applies with immensely increased force to those
larger expeditions which assume the dimensions of an invasion. It was
not until long after Trafalgar had been fought, and the command of the
sea had been secured beyond the possibility of challenge, that the
campaigns in the Peninsula w