Lord Byron in his celebrated apostrophe to the ocean could hardly omit
a reference to the most destructive conflict of naval warfare within
the present century. In one of his supreme stanzas he reserves
Trafalgar for the climax:

"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,--
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar."

The battle of Trafalgar, preceding by forty-two days the battle of
Austerlitz, holds the same relation to British ascendancy on the ocean
that Napoleon's victory over the Emperors Alexander and Francis held
to the French ascendancy on Continental Europe. Henceforth Great
Britain, according to her national hymn, "ruled the wave;" henceforth,
until after Waterloo, France ruled the land. Up to this date, namely,
1805, French ambition had reached as far as the dominion of the sea.
It appears that Napoleon himself had no genius for naval warfare, but
his ambition included the ocean; coincidently with his accession to
the Imperial throne a great fleet was prepared and placed under
command of Admiral Villeneuve for the recovery of the Mediterranean.

This fleet was destined in the first place for a possible invasion of
England, but fate and Providence had reserved for the armament another
service. At the same time the British fleet, to the number of