The reader is referred to the historian of Lord Nelson for the particulars of this great action.  The French and Spaniards awaited the attack in a double line.  Nelson hoisted the famous signal—­“England expects every man to do his duty”; charged in two columns, and broke their array at the first onset.  The battle, nevertheless, was sternly contested.  In the end nineteen ships of the line were taken; and of those Spanish vessels which escaped into Cadiz, seven had been rendered wholly unserviceable.  Four French ships of the line, under Commodore Dumanoir, made way for the Straits, and were captured a few days after by Sir Richard Strachan, commander of the English squadron off Rochefort.  The fleets of France and Spain were annihilated:  yet, great as was the triumph, glorious and unrivalled, it was dearly purchased—­for Nelson fell, mortally wounded, early in the action.  The hero lived just long enough to hear the cheer of consummated victory; and then breathed out his noble spirit, in words worthy of his life, “Thank God!  I have done my duty."[51]

The French and Spaniards had fought together against Nelson; but not in the same spirit.  The former were determined and malignant enemies; the latter generous friends, hurried, by the excitement of temporary and pardonable passion, into hostilities against the only power which could afford their country any chance of avoiding that political slavery, under which it was now the settled purpose of Napoleon’s ambition to crush every nation of Europe.  But the unprincipled conduct of Dumanoir, who escaped from Nelson to be captured shortly after, as has been mentioned, by Strachan, at once brought out the different feelings under which the two allied fleets had been acting.  This French officer, retreating with his four ships, which had had no part in the battle, discharged his broadsides, as he passed, into English vessels no longer capable of pursuit,—­conduct which, as the victory was complete, could have no object but that of carnage.  Nay, such was the ruffian nature of this man’s soul, he fired into the Spanish ships which had yielded to the English, thus, for the sake of trivially injuring his enemy, sacrificing without scruple the blood of his own unfortunate friends.  The Spanish prisoners, in their indignation at this brutality, asked their English captors to permit them to man their guns against the retreating French; and such was the earnestness of their entreaty, and the confidence of Englishmen in the honour of Spaniards, that these men actually were permitted to do as they had requested.  A mutual interchange of good offices ensued.  In the evening after the battle a gale sprung up, and some of the captured vessels drifting on shore, a number of British seamen fell into the hands of the garrison of Cadiz.  They were received as friends:  for the accommodation of their wounded the Spanish soldiers gave up their own beds.  Collingwood, who succeeded to Nelson’s command, sent all