The better to divert attention from his real designs, Napoleon took the time appointed for his squadrons' sailing to visit Italy. Leaving Paris April 1, and journeying leisurely, he was in Alessandria on the first of May and in Milan on the 10th. There he remained a month, and was on the 26th crowned king of the late Italian Republic. His stay in Italy was prolonged to July. It is probably to this carefully timed absence that we owe the full and invaluable record of his hopes and fears, of the naval combinations which chased each other through his tireless mind, of the calculations and surmises—true or false, but always ingenious—which are contained in his almost daily letters to the Minister of Marine.
Prominent among his preoccupations were the detention of Ganteaume,—who, "hermetically blockaded and thwarted by constant calms," [183] could not get away,—and the whereabouts of Nelson, who disappeared from his sight as entirely, and from his knowledge far more completely, than Villeneuve did from the British ken. "In God's name! hurry my Brest squadron away, that it may have time to join Villeneuve. Nelson has been again deceived and gone to Egypt. Villeneuve was out of sight on the 10th of April. Send him word that Nelson is seeking him in Egypt; I have sent the same news to Ganteaume by a courier. God grant, however, that he may not find him in Brest." [184] On the 15th of April Ganteaume did make an attempt. The British fleet had been driven off by a gale on the 11th, but reappeared on the 13th. On the afternoon of the 14th word was brought to Admiral Gardner, who had temporarily relieved Cornwallis, that the French were getting under way. The next day they came out; but the enemy now numbered twenty-four sail to their twenty-one, and after a demonstration they retired within the port.
As the advancing season gave less and less hope of the blockade relaxing, Napoleon formed a new combination. Two ships-of-the-line, now nearly ready at Rochefort, should sail under Rear-Admiral Magon, carrying modified instructions to Villeneuve. The latter was now commanded to wait thirty-five days after Magon's arrival, and then, if Ganteaume had not appeared, return direct to Ferrol, discarding the alternative rendezvous of Santiago. At Ferrol he would find fifteen French and Spanish ships, making with his own and Magon's a total of thirty-five. With these he was to appear before Brest, where Ganteaume would join him, and with the combined force of fifty-six of the line at once enter the Channel. Magon sailed with these orders early in May, and on June 4 reached Villeneuve just in time to insure the direction given by the latter to his fleet upon its return. To facilitate the junction at Brest very heavy batteries were thrown up, covering the anchorage outside the Goulet; and there, in May, Ganteaume took up his position, covered by one hundred and fifty guns on shore.
It will be recognized that the emperor's plan, while retaining its essential features, had now undergone a most important modification, due to the closeness of the British blockade of Brest. A combination of his squadrons still remained the key-stone of the fabric; but the tenacity with which the largest of his detachments was held in check had forced him to accept—what he had rejected as least advantageous—a concentration in the Bay of Biscay, the great hive where swarmed the British navy.
It became therefore more than ever desirable to divert as many as possible of the enemy's cruisers from those waters; an object which now continuously occupied Napoleon's mind and curiously tinged his calculations with the color of his hopes. In defiance of statistics, he thought the East Indies, as has before been said, the first of British interests. He sought therefore to raise alarms about India, and persisted in believing that every division sailing from England was bound there. "Cochrane," he writes on April 13, "was before Lisbon on March 4. He must first have gone to the Cape de Verde, thence to Madeira, and if he gets no information he will go to India. That is what any admiral of sense would do in his case." [185] On the 10th of May, when Cochrane had been over a month in the West Indies, he reiterates this opinion, and at the same time conjectures that five thousand troops which sailed from England on the 15th of April with most secret orders were gone to the Cape of Good Hope. "Fears of Villeneuve's meeting this expedition will force them to send more ships to India." [186] On the 31st of May he guesses that eight ships-of-the-line, which sailed ten days before under Collingwood, were bound to India, [187] and a week later repeats the surmise emphatically: "The responsibility of the ministers is so great they cannot but send him to the East Indies." [188] On the 9th of June he writes: "Everything leads me to believe the English sent fifteen ships to the East Indies, when they learned that Cochrane reached Barbadoes a fortnight after Missiessy sailed; and in that case it is quite possible Nelson has been sent to America." [189] This opinion is repeated on the 13th and 14th; and on the 28th, as the veil was about to fall from his eyes, he sums up the acute reasoning which, starting from a false premise, had so misled him: "It is difficult to believe that without any news the English have sent seventeen ships-of-the-line (i. e. Nelson and Collingwood combined) to the West Indies, when Nelson, joining his ten to Cochrane's six, and three at Jamaica, would have nineteen—superior to our squadron; while Collingwood going to the East Indies with eight and finding there nine, in all seventeen, also superior to us—it is difficult, I say, to believe that the enemy, with the chance of being everywhere superior, should blindly abandon the East Indies." [190]
Some French writers, [191] as well as some English, have disparaged the insight of Nelson, comparing him unfavorably with Napoleon, and basing their estimate largely upon his error in esteeming Egypt the aim of the French. In view of the foregoing extracts, and of other miscalculations made by the emperor during this remarkable campaign—which will appear farther on—it must be admitted that when in the dark, without good information, both were forced to inferences, more or less acute, but which, resting on no solid data, rose, as Nelson said, little above guesses. So also Collingwood has been credited with completely unravelling Napoleon's plan, and his penetration has been exalted above Nelson's because, after the latter's return from chasing Villeneuve to the West Indies, he wrote that the flight there was to take off the British naval force; overlooking his conjecture, two lines before, that (not England, but) "Ireland is the real mark and butt of all these operations." Rather might each adopt for himself Napoleon's own words, "I have so often in my life been mistaken that I no longer blush for it." [192] When his frigates lost sight of Villeneuve, on the night of March 31, Nelson went neither east nor west; he concentrated his force to cover what he thought the most likely objects of the enemy, and awaited information as to his movements. "I shall neither go to the eastward of Sicily nor to the westward of Sardinia until I know something positive." [193] It can be confidently said that under like conditions Napoleon would have done the same.
The fault of Napoleon's calculations was in over-estimating both the importance and the danger of India, and also in not allowing for the insight and information of the British government. He himself laid down, with his peculiarly sound judgment, the lines it ought to follow: "If I had been in the British Admiralty, I would have sent a light squadron to the East and West Indies, and formed a strong fleet of twenty of the line which I would not have dispatched until I knew Villeneuve's destination." [194] This was just what the Admiralty did. A light squadron was on its way to India, and eight ships were ordered to the West Indies under Collingwood; but that able officer, finding Nelson had started, contented himself with sending two to re-enforce him, and took up his own position with six before Cadiz, thus blocking the junction of the Cartagena ships. The strong body of twenty was kept before Brest, much to Napoleon's annoyance. "If England realizes the serious game she is playing, she ought to raise the blockade of Brest." [195] But here, as with regard to the Indian expeditions, Napoleon's thought was fathered by his wish. To weaken the Brest blockade, as he confessed a little later, was the great point for France. [196]
Nothing in fact is more noteworthy, nor more creditable, than the intelligence and steadiness with which the British naval authorities resisted Napoleon's efforts to lead them into ex-centric movements. This was partly due to an accurate judgment of the worth of the enemy's detached squadrons, partly to an intuitive sense of the supreme importance of the Biscay positions, and partly to information much more accurate than Napoleon imagined, or than he himself received in naval transactions. "Those boasted English," jeered he, when he thought them ignorant of Villeneuve's second sailing, "who claim to know of everything, who have agents everywhere, couriers booted and spurred everywhere, knew nothing of it." [197] Yet, by a singular coincidence, on the very day, April 25, that they were supposed thus deceived, the Admiralty were hurrying letters to Nelson and to the West Indies with the important tidings. "You reason," wrote he to Decrès, "as if the enemy were in the secret." [198] This is just what they were,—not as to all details, but as to the main features of his plans. While the emperor was wildly reckoning on imaginary squadrons hastening to India, and guessing where Nelson was, both the latter and his government knew where Villeneuve had gone, and the British admiral was already in the West Indies. About the beginning of May it was known in England not only that the Toulon fleet had sailed, but whither it was bound; [199] and about the first of June, despite the cautions about secrecy imposed by Bonaparte, the British were informed by a prisoner that "the combined fleet, of sixty sail-of-the-line, will fight our fleet (balayer la Manche), while the large frigates will come up channel to convoy the flotilla over. The troops are impatiently awaiting the appearance of the ships to set them free." [200]
The Admiralty therefore understood as well as did Napoleon that the crucial necessity in their dispositions was to prevent the combination of the enemy's squadrons, and that the chief scene of operations would be the Bay of Biscay and the approaches to the Channel. They contented themselves, consequently, with strengthening the force there, and keeping before Cadiz alone a detachment under Collingwood, lest a concentration in that port should compel them to weaken the Biscay squadrons. At the time Villeneuve sailed, an expedition of five thousand troops, whose destination was kept profoundly secret, was ready to start for the Mediterranean. This re-enforcement secured the naval bases of Gibraltar and Malta, and the Mediterranean otherwise was abandoned to frigates, supported by two or three ships-of-the-line. Herein also the practice of the Admiralty agreed with the precept of Napoleon. "The Mediterranean," wrote he on June 7 to his Minister of Marine, "is now nothing. I would rather see there two of Villeneuve's ships than forty;" and he added the pregnant counsel, which was exemplified by the British action, "It seems to me your purpose is not exclusive enough for a great operation. You must correct this fault, for that is the art of great successes and of great operations."