On 21 October 1805, the Battle of Trafalgar was fought between the British under Horatio Nelson and the Franco-Spanish under Pierre-Charles Villeneuve during the Napoleonic Wars.
Why did it happen?
Following the Peace of Amiens in 1803, Napoleon planned the invasion of Britain, since this would remove the most formidable hurdle to French supremacy in Europe. In the summer of 1805, Napoleon encamped his 210,000 strong army at Boulogne but required the French and Spanish navy to guarantee the non-intervention of the British navy to transport his army across the English Channel. Unfortunately, the British navy was keeping a stranglehold on the French ports of Toulon, Brest, Rochefort Cadiz and Cartagena and Napoleon subsequently abandoned his invasion plans in September to focus on a land campaign against Austria and Russia. The British then began to amass a fleet off Cadiz and on 29 September, Admiral Horatio Nelson took command of the British fleet. To restore his honour, the French admiral at Cadiz, Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, decided to sail his Franco-Spanish fleet to do battle with Nelson’s fleet on 19 October before Napoleon could send someone to replace him. On 21 October, the two fleets met each other off Cape Trafalgar, south of Cadiz.
Who was involved?
The British fleet at Trafalgar numbered 27 warships with Horatio Nelson aboard HMS Victory and his second-in-command, Collingwood, aboard Royal Sovereign. Nelson planned to attack in two columns designed to cut the Franco-Spanish line so that the centre and rear squadrons became isolated from the vanguard. Nelson was in command of a column of 12 warships and Collingwood was in command of the remaining 15 warships. Once the line was broken, the British ships could then engage the enemy fleet and fight a battle of annihilation. This manoeuvre, known as “Breaking the Line”, was first used by Admiral George Rodney at the Battle of the Saints in 1782 during the American Revolutionary War. The Franco-Spanish fleet numbered 33 warships with Villeneuve aboard Bucentaure and his second-in-command, Federico Gravina, aboard the Principe de Asturias. The Franco-Spanish plan was to sail back towards Cadiz and fight the British fleet closer to a friendly port.
What happened?
At 7.30 am, Villeneuve ordered his fleet of French and Spanish ships to head back towards Cadiz, but four hours later, the British fleet under Nelson and Collingwood intercepted Villeneuve’s fleet and attacked it in two columns at a right-angle. This attack pierced the Franco-Spanish line and the British subsequently engaged their ships in a pell-mell battle. At 1.15 pm, Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory became entangled with the French ship Redoubtable and Nelson was shot by a French sniper. While Nelson was brought below deck, Victory was saved from being captured by the arrival of the Temeraire, who drifted into the Redoubtable. An hour later at 2.30 pm, 10 French warships from the vanguard turned around and approached the battle taking place in the south. However, after a half-hearted exchange of fire, eight of the warships disengaged and headed back to Cadiz while the remaining two were captured by the British. Three hours after being shot, Nelson, upon hearing of the British success in the battle, uttered the words, “Thank God, I have done my duty” before dying. Shortly afterwards, the French ship Achille caught fire and exploded before 11 French and Spanish warships under Gravina fled to Cadiz, leaving the rest to their fate. Throughout the battle, the British suffered 449 killed and 1,214 wounded with no ships lost, while France and Spain suffered 4,408 killed, 2,545 wounded and 18 warships sunk or captured.
What changed as a result?
The Battle of Trafalgar was a decisive victory for the British. Although Napoleon would win great victories in Europe over the next seven years, his naval power was irrevocably broken and his hopes for neutralising Great Britain were ended. Throughout the rest of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was able to use her naval power to control trade in Europe, as well as maintain its armies in Spain during the Peninsular War. In addition, the British victory at Trafalgar ultimately ensured that the British navy would dominate the world’s oceans unchallenged for the next one hundred years.
Bibliography
Grant, R.G. Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat. London, Dorling Kindersley, 2005.
Grant, R.G. Battle At Sea: 3,000 Years of Naval Warfare. New York, Dorling Kindersley, 2008.
Regan, Geoffrey. Battles That Changed History: Fifty Decisive Battles Spanning Over 2,500 Years of Warfare. London, Andre Deutsch, 2002.