Moreover, as Nelson delivered the attack, he threw away the simple idea of concentration.

For a suddenly conceived strategical object he deliberately exposed the heads of his columns to what with almost any other enemy would have been an overwhelming superiority.

On the other hand, by making, as he did, a perpendicular instead of a parallel attack, as he had intended, he accentuated--it is true at enormous risk--the cardinal points of his design; that is, he departed still further from the old order of battle, and he still further concealed from the enemy what the real attack was to be, and after it was developed what the containing squadron was going to do.
Concentration in fact was only the crude and ordinary raw material of a design of unmatched subtlety and invention.
The keynote of his conception, then, was his revolutionary substitution of the primitive Elizabethan and early seventeenth century method for the fetish of the single line.

For some time it is true the established battle order had been blown upon from various quarters, but no one as yet had been able to devise any system convincing enough to dethrone it.

It will be remembered that at least as early as 1759 an Additional Instruction had provided for a battle order in two lines, but it does not appear ever to have been used.[5] Rodney's manoeuvre again had foreshadowed the use of parts of the line independently for the purpose of concentration and containing.