STORIES RECALLED BY TRAFALGAR DAY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12635, 24 October 1905, Page 7

STORIES RECALLED BY TRAFALGAR DAY.

NELSON'S ANTAGONIST

(From the "Press")

History, which has discussed all the bearings of Trafalgar from the British side, has done less than justice to the French commander. Napoleon called him a coward, and a coward history has been content to leave him.. And yet the point ;s surely debateable. Pierre Charles Jean Baptiste Sylvestre de Villereuvo was born on the last day of 1763, so that he was Nelson's junior by five years. Entering the navy at fifteen, no was a captain at thirty. He commanded the rear division of the French lin3 at the Battle of the Nile, saving his own vessel, the Guillaume Tell, and four others from the general loss. He was appointed to tho command of the Toulon squadron in 1804, on the death of Latouche Treville, unquestionably the ablest of Napoleon's admirals. Napoleon himself doubted the wisdom of the appointment because the success of his whole project of the invasion of England depended on the Toulon fleet. "All naval expeditions undertaken since I have been at the head of the Government,'! ho said, "have failed becausa the admirals see double, and have learned— I knoAV not where—that war can be waged without running risks." In that he indicated Villeneuve's weakness. "Accomplished, bravo, and skilful," says Captain Mahan of the Admiral, "he saw tho defects of the French navy with a clearness which absolutely sapped his power to take risks. Although capable of the utmost self-devotion, he was unable to devotos his command as the forlorn hope upon which might follow a great achievement." When he failed, after the engagement with Calder, Napoleon decided to remove him from the command, and it was in a desperate attempt to retrieve his reputation that Villeneuve put to sea from Cadiz. Captured, he lay a prisoner in England foil a year, and then returned to France. But he had not been forgiven. Hd stopped at Rennes on the journey to Paris, and in the morning was found in bed, stabbed to the heart.