Warily and steadfastly he advanced, step by step, determined to take no risk that could by the utmost care be changed into security, but equally resolved to dare the hazard, if by the military movements set in action by his unsurpassed genius, he could for a moment obtain the particular combination which would, to use his own phrase, make him master of the world.  What if the soldiers of the Grand Army never returned from England?  There were still in France men enough, as good as they were before his energizing spirit wrought them into the force which in its might trod the Continent under foot.  Like Nelson dying at Trafalgar, it too would have laid down its life, leaving its work finished.  Neither man nor army could have a prouder memorial.

The particular combination upon which Napoleon was willing to stake everything was a naval control of the Straits of Dover for a very few days, coincident with the presence there of an army ready and equipped to cross at once.  The latter condition was merely a question of preparation—­long, tedious, and expensive, but perfectly feasible.  In the early months of 1805 it was realized.  The army, a substantial, absolute fact, was there, awaiting only the throwing of the bridge.  The naval part of the problem was far more difficult.  In the face of the naval supremacy of Great Britain, the sought-for control could only be casual and transient—­a fleeting opportunity to be seized, utilized, and so to disappear.  Its realization must be effected by stratagem, by successful deception and evasion.  The coveted superiority would be not actual, but local,—­the French fleet in force there, the British fleet, though the greater in force, elsewhere; the weight of the former concentrated at one point by simultaneous movements of its different detachments, which movements had been so calculated and directed that they had misled the British divisions, and, of themselves, diverted them from the decisive centre.  Subsidiary to this main effort, Napoleon also contemplated a simultaneous landing of some twenty thousand men in Ireland, which, like the naval movements, would distract and tend to divide the unity of the British resistance.  The British admirals considered this project to be easier than the invasion of Great Britain, and it engaged their much more serious attention.

There were three principal French detachments to be united,—­in Brest twenty ships, in Toulon ten, in Rochefort five.  To these the outbreak of the war between Great Britain and Spain added the forces of the latter kingdom, in Ferrol and Cadiz, aggregating fifteen serviceable ships; but this was not until March, 1805.  Of the three French contingents, the one from Rochefort was small; and, as a factor, although important, it was not essential.  Its failure might weaken or impede the progress of the general movement, without entirely destroying it; but it was of necessity that the Toulon and Brest divisions both should fulfil their missions, accurately