[The History of Napoleon Buonaparte by John Gibson Lockhart]@TWC D-Link book
The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

CHAPTER XIX
15/27

Collingwood, who succeeded to Nelson's command, sent all the wounded Spaniards on shore to be cured in their own country, merely taking their parole that they would not serve again during the war: and the governor of Cadiz, with still more romantic generosity, offered his hospitals for the use of Collingwood's wounded seamen, pledging the honour of the Spanish name that they should be cared for like his own men, and sent back to their admiral whenever they had recovered.

It will appear, hereafter, what illustrious consequences the kindly feelings thus manifested were destined to produce.
Buonaparte, when he heard of this mighty discomfiture, which for ever put an end to all his visions of invading England, is said to have lost that possession of himself, which he certainly maintained when the catastrophe of Aboukir was announced to him at Cairo.

Yet arrogance mingled strangely in his expressions of sorrow.--"I cannot be everywhere," said he to the messenger of the evil tidings--as if Napoleon could have had any more chance of producing victory by his presence at Trafalgar, than Nelson would have dreamed of having by appearing on horseback at Marengo.

In his newspapers, and even in his formal messages to the senate at Paris, Buonaparte always persisted in denying that there had been a great defeat at Trafalgar, or even a great battle.

But how well he appreciated the facts of the case was well known to the unfortunate Admiral Villeneuve.


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