great victory on the events of that time may not be out of place.  It is certain that Villeneuve at Trafalgar fought under more favourable conditions than in the conflict of July 22nd.  He had landed his very numerous sick, his crews had been refreshed and reinforced, and, above all, the worst of the Spanish ships had been replaced by seaworthy and serviceable craft.  Yet out of the thirty-three sail of the line, he lost eighteen to an enemy that numbered only twenty-seven sail; and that fact alone absolves him from the charge of cowardice in declining to face Cornwallis and Calder in July with ships that were cumbered with sick and badly needed refitting.

Then again:  it is often stated that Trafalgar saved England from invasion.  To refute this error it is merely needful to remind the reader that all immediate fear of invasion was over, when, at the close of August, Napoleon wheeled the Grand Army against Austria.  Not until the Continent was conquered could the landing in Kent become practicable.  That opportunity occurred two years later, after Tilsit; then, in truth, the United Kingdom was free from panic because Trafalgar had practically destroyed the French navy.  For these islands, then, the benefits of Trafalgar were prospective.  But, for the British Empire, they were immediate.  Every French, Dutch, and Spanish colony that now fell into our hands was in great measure the fruit of Nelson’s victory, which heralded the second and vaster stage of imperial growth.

Finally, the decisive advantage which Britain now gained over Napoleon at sea compelled him, if he would realize the world-wide schemes ever closest to his heart, to adopt the method of warfare against us which he had all along contemplated as an effective alternative.  As far back as February, 1798, he pointed out that there were three ways of attacking and ruining England, either a direct invasion, or a French control of North Germany which would ruin British commerce, or an expedition to the Indies.  After Trafalgar the first of these alternatives was impossible, and the last receded for a time into the background.  The second now took the first place in his thoughts; he could only bring England to his feet and gain a world-empire by shutting out her goods from the whole of the Continent, and thus condemning her to industrial strangulation.  In a word, Trafalgar necessitated the adoption of the Continental System, which was built up by the events now to be described.

Note to the Third Edition.—­An American critic has charged me with inconsistency in saying that the Third Coalition was not built up by English gold, because I state (p. 5) that the first advances were made by England to Russia.  I ought to have used the phrase “the first written proposals that I have found were made,” etc.  Czartoryski’s “Memoirs” (vol. ii., chs. ii.-iii.), to which I referred my readers for details, show clearly that Alexander and his advisers looked on a rupture with France