perseverance on your part will for ever reduce to the rank of the
small Powers: 150,000 soldiers ... and the crews complete are
embarked on 2,000 craft of the flotilla, which, despite the English
cruisers, forms a long line of broadsides from Etaples to Cape
Grisnez. Your voyage, and it alone, makes us without any doubt
masters of England."

Austria and Russia were already marshalling their forces for the war
of the Third Coalition. Yet, though menaced by those Powers, to whom
he had recently offered the most flagrant provocations, this
astonishing man was intent only on the ruin of England, and secretly
derided their preparations. "You need not" (so he wrote to Eugene,
Viceroy of Italy) "contradict the newspaper rumours of war, but make
fun of them.... Austria's actions are probably the result of
fear."--Thus, even when the eastern horizon lowered threateningly with
clouds, he continued to pace the cliffs of Boulogne, or gallop
restlessly along the strand, straining his gaze westward to catch the
first glimpse of his armada. That horizon was never to be flecked with
Villeneuve's sails: they were at this time furled in the harbour of
Cadiz.

Unmeasured abuse has been showered upon Villeneuve for his retreat to
that harbour. But it must be remembered that in both of Napoleon's
last orders to him, those of July 16th and 26th, he was required to
sail to Cadiz under certain conditions. In the first order prescribing
alternative ways of gaining the mastery of the Channel, that step was
recommended solely as a last alternative in case of misfortune: he was
directed not to enter the long and difficult inlet of Ferrol, but,
after collecting the squadron there, to cast anchor at Cadiz. In the
order of July 26th he was charged positively to repair to Cadiz: "My
intention is that you rally at Cadiz the Spanish ships there,
disembark your sick, and, without stopping there more than four days
at most, again set sail, return to Ferrol, etc." Villeneuve seems not
to have received these last orders, but he alludes to those of July
16th.[334]

These, then, were probably the last instructions he received from
Napoleon before setting sail from the roads of Corunna on August 13th.
The censures passed on his retreat to Cadiz are therefore based on the
supposition that he received instructions which he did not
receive.[335] He expressly based his move to Cadiz on Napoleon's
orders of July 16th. The mishaps wh