French
navy. The long blockades had made Nelson's captains perfect seamen,
and he taught them that close fighting at pistol-shot distance was the
secret of victory. "No English captain," he said, "can do wrong who,
in fight, lays a ship alongside an enemy." It was a captain of
Nelson's school--a Scotchman--who at Camperdown, unable, just as the
action began, to read some complicated signal from his chief, flung his
signal-book on the deck, and in broad Scotch exclaimed, "D---- me! up
with the hellem an' gang in the middle o't." That trick of "ganging
into the middle o't" was irresistible.

The battle of the Nile destroyed the naval prestige of France, made
England supreme in the Mediterranean, saved India, left Napoleon and
his army practically prisoners in Egypt, and united Austria, Russia,
and Turkey in league against France. The night battle in Aboukir Bay,
in a word, changed the face of history.

THE FUSILEERS AT ALBUERA

"And nearer, fast and nearer,
Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still, and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,
Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly, and more plainly,
Now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,
In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears."
--MACAULAY.

Albuera is the fiercest, bloodiest, and most amazing fight in the mighty
drama of the Peninsular war. On May 11, 1811, the English guns were
thundering sullenly over Badajos. Wellington was beyond the Guadiana,
pressing Marmont; and Beresford, with much pluck but little skill, was
besieging the great frontier fortress. Soult, however, a master of war,
was swooping down from Seville to raise the siege. On the 14th he
reached Villafranca, only thirty miles distant, and fired salvos from his
heaviest guns all through the night to warn the garrison of approaching
succour. Beresford could not both maintain the siege and fight Soult;
and on the night of the 13th he abandoned his trenches, burnt his gabions
and fascines, and marched to meet Soult at Albuera, a low ridge, with a
shallow river in front, which barred the road to Badajos. As the morning
of May 16, 1811, broke, heavy with clouds, and wild with gusty
rain-storms, the two armies grimly gazed at each other in stern pause,
ere they joined in the wrestle of actual battle.

All