rs of the only race whose home has always
been the sea, and, meeting it, they fell.

[Illustration: NELSON]

Able men all, and mighty warlords, the might of three was much more in
their armies than in themselves. Cruel Philip was not a warrior of any
kind. Ambitious Louis and the vainglorious Kaiser were only second-rate
soldiers, who would never have won their own way to the highest command.
But Napoleon was utterly different. He was as great a master of the art
of war on land as Nelson was by sea; and that is one reason why Nelson,
who caused his downfall, stands supreme. But there are other reasons
too. Nelson, like Drake, fought three campaigns with marvellous skill;
but he also fought more seamanlike foes. Like Russell, he completely
destroyed the enemy fleet; but he never had Russell's advantage in
numbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only give
two more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made his
captains "like a band of brothers," which made the bluejackets who
carried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most precious
relics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; secondly, the
very different kind of "Nelson touch" he gave his fleet when handling it
for battle, that last touch of perfection in forming it up, leading it
on, striking hardest at the weakest spot, and then driving home the
attack to the complete destruction of the enemy.

Nelson was not the first, but the fifth, great admiral to command fleets
in the last French War (1793-1815). Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, Duncan,
Nelson: that is the order in which the victors came. Howe, Hood, St.
Vincent, and Duncan were all men who had fought in Pitt's Imperial War;
and each was old enough to have been Nelson's father. Howe was the hero
of the relief of Gibraltar in 1782, at the time that all the foreign
navies in the world were winning American Independence by taking sides in
a British civil war. Howe was also the hero of "the Glorious First of
June" in 1794, when he defeated the French off the north-west coast of
France.

But it was under Hood, not Howe, that Nelson learnt the way fleets should
be used; and it was under St. Vincent that he first sprang into fame.

[Illustration: FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK, 1782.]

St. Vincent, with fifteen ships of the line (that is, big battleships)
was sailing south to stop a Spanish fleet from coming north to join the
French, when, on the 14th o