ed in a happy peace had not Napoleon
set out to win the overlordship of the world, like Philip and Louis
before him and the German Kaiser since. France, tired of revolutionary
troubles and proud of the way her splendid army was being led to victory,
let Napoleon's dreams of conquest mislead her for twelve years to come.
Hence the new war that began in 1803 and ended on the field of Waterloo.

Napoleon had used the peace to strengthen his navy for a last attempt to
bring the British to their knees. Villeneuve, the admiral who had
escaped from the Nile, was finally given command of the joint fleets of
France and Spain in the south, while Napoleon himself commanded the great
army of invasion at Boulogne, within thirty miles of England. "Let us,"
said Napoleon, "be masters of the Channel for six hours and we shall be
the masters of the world." But he knew that the only way to reach London
was to outwit Nelson.

Napoleon's naval plans were wonderfully clever, like all his plans. But
they were those of a landsman who failed to reckon with all the troubles
of bringing the different squadrons of the French and Spanish fleets
together in spite of the British blockade. Moreover, they were always
changing, and not always for the better. Finally, toward the end of
August, 1805, when he saw they were not going to work, he suddenly began
a land campaign that ended with his stupendous victory over the Austrians
and Russians at Austerlitz early in December.

But meanwhile the French and Spanish fleets had remained a danger which
Nelson wished to destroy at its very source, by beating Villeneuve's main
body wherever he could find it. At last, on the 21st of October, after
two years of anxious watching, he caught it off Cape Trafalgar, at the
northwest entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. Directly he saw he could
bring on a battle he ran up the signal which the whole world knows, and
which we of the Empire will cherish till the end of time: "England
expects that every man will do his duty." That he had done his own we
know from many an eye-witness, as well as from this entry in his private
diary three months before Trafalgar: "I went on shore for the first time
since the 16th of June 1803; and, from having my foot out of the
_Victory_, two years wanting ten days." During all this long spell of
harassing duty he kept his fleet "tuned up" to the last pitch of
perfection in scouting, manoeuvring, and gunnery, so as to be always