one squadron in
superior force upon one end of the enemy's formation, and using the
other squadrons to cover the attack or support it if need
arose. Fourthly, there is the principle of concealment--that is,
disposing the squadrons in such a manner that even after the real
attack has been delivered the enemy cannot tell what the containing
squadrons mean to do, and in consequence are forced to hold their
parrying move in suspense. The memorandum also included the idea of
concentration, and this is often spoken of as its conspicuous
merit. But in the idea of concentration there was nothing new, even if
we go back no further than Rodney. It was only the method of
concentration, woven out of his four fundamental innovations, that was
new. Moreover, as Nelson delivered the attack, he threw away the
simple idea of concentration. For a suddenly conceived strategical
object he deliberately exposed the heads of his columns to what with
almost any other enemy would have been an overwhelming superiority. On
the other hand, by making, as he did, a perpendicular instead of a
parallel attack, as he had intended, he accentuated--it is true at
enormous risk--the cardinal points of his design; that is, he departed
still further from the old order of battle, and he still further
concealed from the enemy what the real attack was to be, and after it
was developed what the containing squadron was going to do.
Concentration in fact was only the crude and ordinary raw material of
a design of unmatched subtlety and invention.

The keynote of his conception, then, was his revolutionary
substitution of the primitive Elizabethan and early seventeenth
century method for the fetish of the single line. For some time it is
true the established battle order had been blown upon from various
quarters, but no one as yet had been able to devise any system
convincing enough to dethrone it. It will be remembered that at least
as early as 1759 an Additional Instruction had provided for a battle
order in two lines, but it does not appear ever to have been
used.[5] Rodney's manoeuvre again had foreshadowed the use of parts
of the line independently for the purpose of concentration and
containing. In 1782 Clerk of Eldin had privately printed his
_Essay_, which contained suggestions for an attack from to-windward,
with the line broken up into echeloned divisions in close
resemblance to the disposition laid down in Nelson's memorandum. In
1790 this part of his