was doing.  On this supposition his idea would be that his ships should attack the enemy ahead of Villeneuve as they came up.  And this his second, the Temeraire, actually did.  But, as we have seen by Instruction XXIV. of 1799, the old rule of 1790 had been altered, and if Nelson intended to execute Hoste’s plan of attack he, as ‘leading ship,’ would or should have engaged the enemy’s ‘leading ship,’ leaving the rest as they could to engage the enemy of ‘greatest force.’  The only explanation is that, if he really intended to attack the van, he again changed his mind when he fetched up with Villeneuve, and could not resist engaging him.  More probably, however, the signal was wrongly repeated by the Euryalus, and as made by Nelson it was really an intimation to Collingwood that he meant to cover the attack on the rear and centre by a feint on the van.[34]

However this may be, the French appear to have regarded Nelson’s movement to port as a real attack.  Their best account (which is also perhaps the best account that exists) says that just before coming into gun-shot the two British columns began to separate.  The leading vessels of Nelson’s column, it says, passed through the same interval astern of the Bucentaure, and then it tells how ’les vaisseaux de queue de cette colonne, au contraire, serrerent un peu le vent, comme pour s’approcher des vaisseaux de l’avant-garde de la flotte combinee:  mais apres avoir recu quelques bordees de ces vaisseaux ils abandonnerent ce dessein et se porterent vers les vaisseaux places entre le Redoutable et la Santa Anna ou vinrent unir leurs efforts a ceux des vaisseaux anglais qui combattaient deja le Bucentaure et la Santisima Trinidad.’[35] This is to some extent confirmed by Dumanoir himself, who commanded the allied van, in his official memorandum addressed to Decres, December 30, 1809.  In defending his failure to tack sooner to Villeneuve’s relief, he says, ’Au commencement du combat, la colonne du Nord [i.e. Nelson’s] se dirigea sur l’avant-garde qui engagea avec elle pendant quarante minutes.’[36] In partial corroboration of this there is the statement in the log of the Temeraire, the ship that was immediately behind Nelson, that she opened her fire on the Santisima Trinidad and the two ships ahead of her; that is, she engaged the ships ahead of where Nelson broke the line, so that Captain Harvey as well as Dumanoir may have believed that Nelson intended his real attack to be on ‘the end of the line.’

In the face of these facts it is impossible to say categorically that Nelson intended nothing but a feint on the van.  It is equally impossible to say he intended a real attack.  The point perhaps can never be decided with absolute certainty, but it is this very uncertainty that brings out the true merit and the real lesson of Nelson’s attack.  As we now may gather from his captains’ opinions, its true merit was not that he threw his whole fleet on part of a superior enemy—­that was a