“Gentlemen,” he said, in a loud voice, “study that part of the country as closely as possible; you will have to play a role in it within a few days. General Suchet, on the left side of your division there is an isolated mound, commanding your entire front. Cause fourteen cannon to be placed on it in the course of the present night.” [Footnote: Napoleon’s own words. Vide “Memoires du Duc de Rovigo,” vol. ii., p. 169.] He nodded to the gentlemen and entered his cabinet.
He paced his room for a long while with folded arms, compressed lips, and a gloomy air.
“I need a few days more,” he muttered. “If they should attack me now, quickly and resolutely, I must succumb; if they give me three days’ time, however, I shall defeat them.”
When he then stooped musingly before his desk, he suddenly noticed the papers lying on it.
“Ah,” he said, hastily seizing a large, sealed letter, “a courier, who has brought dispatches in my absence! From the minister of the navy—news from the fleet!”
He broke the seal hurriedly and unfolded the paper. While reading it his mien became still more gloomy; a cloud of anger settled on his expansive brow, and his cheeks, which had hitherto only been pale, turned livid.
The glance which he now cast toward heaven would have reminded the spectator of the Titans who dared to hurl their missiles even at the Sovereign Deity; the words muttered by his quivering lips were an angry oath.
With this oath he crumpled up the paper in his hand, threw it down and stamped on it; then, as if ashamed of his own violence, he sank down on a chair, and laid his hands slowly, and with a deep sigh, on his trembling, pale face. The modern Titan had now found out for the first time that there was a God enthroned in heaven more powerful than himself; for the first time an invisible hand had stopped him in his hitherto victorious course.
The paper he had just trampled under foot announced to him the first great defeat, the first check his grand schemes had met with.
The French fleet had been completely beaten and almost annihilated by the English at Trafalgar. [Footnote: October 21, 1806.] England, the only enemy who had constantly opposed Napoleon in a menacing and fearless manner, detested England had gained a magnificent triumph. She had destroyed the whole naval power of France, and won a brilliant victory; a victory which humiliated France and overwhelmed her with disgrace. It is true it was a dearly-bought victory for England, for Nelson, her greatest naval hero, had paid for his immortal triumph with his life. The French admiral, Villeneuve, who was defeated at Trafalgar, had not even been lucky and wise enough to expiate his ignominy by his death; he had fallen, a despairing prisoner, into the hands of the English, and served as a living trophy to the triumphant conqueror’s. [Footnote: Admiral Villeneuve was released by the English government. Napoleon banished him to Rennes, where he committed suicide on the 26th of April, 1806, by piercing his heart with a pin.]